Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how Justin Trudeau, Bill Morneau and the federal Libs are focused mostly on further privileging the rich:

There’s lots of lamenting about the way the rich keep getting richer while ordinary folk struggle to keep their heads above water. Along with the lamenting, there’s usually some resigned muttering about how it’s all just part of today’s global economy.

But there’s a much simpler explanation: our governments keep passing laws that make the rich richer and ordinary citizens poorer.

An example of this is currently being played out in Ottawa as the Trudeau government — ostensibly a “progressive” government that champions the middle class — is moving forward with legislation aimed at stripping away pension benefits from potentially hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers.
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The Trudeau government defends its proposed changes on the grounds that workers must “consent” to having their pensions converted to the new riskier format.

But this is like the “consent” given by women who get groped by a powerful boss; employers can get their unionized workers to “consent” by locking them out if they don’t agree to the pension change at the bargaining table.

Certainly, Trudeau and Morneau seem comfortable with today’s corporate mantra that workers can no longer count on things in the new economy. Learning to live with risk is the new black.

The corporate keenness to foist riskier pensions on their workers is not driven by necessity. Corporate profits have risen significantly in recent years, even as companies have switched to the stingier pensions that transfer all risk to employees.

Even fabulously rich corporations are adopting the new pensions — not because they can’t afford to pay workers fixed pension benefits like they used to, but because they’d rather not be obliged to do so.
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Risk may be good for those lower down the ladder, but for those at the top, guaranteed lifetime abundance still apparently has its place in the global economy. 

- And Cristobal Young points out that a look at actual evidence strongly challenges the claim that high-wealth individuals will leave jurisdictions with more progressive tax structures.

- Nick Hopkins notes that the UK Conservative government is choosing not to crack down ton tax avoidance, preferring instead to inflict austerity measures on the people with the least. And Jim Tankersley discusses a union-led push to test whether corporate tax giveaways will be passed along in the form of wages as claimed by Donald Trump and his band of merry looters (in the full knowledge that there's no plausible reason to think they will).

- The Globe and Mail's editorial board discusses why net neutrality is essential for consumer and business fairness, while Colin Horgan writes that the U.S.' policies may have a profound influence far beyond its borders. And Michael Byers makes the case that Canada should ensure the protection of net neutrality as part of its NAFTA bargaining position.

- Finally, Jonathan Thompson maps out the U.S.' hundreds of pipeline spills over just the last two years. And Erik Heinrich notes that it's far from clear who will ultimately foot the bill for spills in Canada - and that even pipeline proponents may have no interest in going ahead with projects if faced with the environmental risk.