Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy studies the large-scale use of offshore tax avoidance in the corporate sector, just in time for the Paradise Papers to reveal another set of tax avoidance loopholes being kept open for the benefit of Justin Trudeau's insiders. And Matthew Klein proposes that governments take non-voting equity stakes of corporations up front, rather than having to try to navigate a myriad of tax avoidance techniques to ensure a business pays its fair share.

- Eric Levitz argues that gross imbalances of wealth and influence within the U.S.' political system are more of a threat to a functional democracy than any outside intervention. And the Equality Trust weighs in on the need to encourage civic engagement by placing people on a more equal footing:

With the rungs on the ladder this far apart it is little wonder that social mobility is severely lacking according to the government’s own Social Mobility Commission. Citizenship is a two-way process; in order for people to engage in a positive way with the state, then the state must engage with its citizens in a positive way and protect and respect them. This vast material inequality is now beginning to seep through to matters of life and death with life expectancy levels stalling and infant mortality rates beginning to rise.

The fact that so much of the nation’s wealth is (and is very acutely perceived and felt to be) concentrated in London and the South-East also aggravates this sense of being left behind in other parts of the UK. This is also compounded by disparities in income and wealth between old and young, urban and rural, white and BME communities as well as between men and women – all of which are component parts of our overall economic and social inequality. The only way to overcome all these divisions between us is to actively plan to reduce them. We need the government to commit to a national mission of economic and social renewal based firmly on reducing the gap between rich and poor in the UK.

- Maggie Gillis reports that the simple step of opening up a school for community use can tap into a desire for social connection - making it all the more egregious that governments like that of Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party are trying to shut down or privatize the spaces which can be used for that purpose.

- Meanwhile, Paul Dechene discusses the poverty which remains as a blight on Saskatchewan even through what was supposed to have been a period of prosperity.

- Finally, Beatrice Britneff reports on the Libs' use of a proposed bill which hasn't even been passed yet to limit public access to information.