Tuesday Morning LInks

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Wilt examines how Canada lets the corporate sector get away with paying far less than a fair price for our natural resources. And Marc Lee points out the massive subsidies British Columbia has handed to the natural gas industry in particular. 

- Christo Aivalis discusses the need to put public ownership on the table to ensure the availability of necessary services in the face of both business collapses and warped market incentives:

(I)n a recent announcement, Greyhound Canada has decided to end its passenger bus lines west of Ontario, leaving over 400 people unemployed, and numerous communities without access to reliable public transit. The company discontinued the lines because they are unprofitable. This follows the Saskatchewan Party’s dismantling last year of the Saskatchewan Transport Company [sic], which was founded a crown corporation dedicated to delivering public transit regardless of profitability.

The crux of the matter, however, goes beyond the Greyhound news. Indeed, this episode shows that, when it comes to essential services, Canadians cannot depend on the private sector to provide them. This issue along with many others has re-ignited the debate around the role of public ownership in a democratic society. A society in which private capital is predominate cannot be just and democratic. The only solution is to assert democratic priorities over the organization of the economy.
...
...If we are to build a just society, we require a just economy. And while that must include better social programs financed through redistributive taxation, the democratic socialist project is not encompassed by social programs alone; it must concern itself with the democratization of the economy. And while this shouldn’t be done solely through state ownership—worker, community, and consumer cooperatives all being viable mechanisms here—public control will nonetheless be a central plank. In that spirit, let’s make 2019 the year in which the left re-asserts economic democracy as the cornerstone for a better Canada.

- Robson Fletcher takes a look at the composition of the minimum-wage workforce in Alberta. And Katharine Murphy reports on Australia Labour's plan to ensure that temporary workers aren't paid less than the permanent employees they so often replace.

- Richard Florida offers a reminder that it's people already living in poverty who will bear the most severe effects of climate change. And Justine Calma discusses the lives already being lost to extreme heat in New York City.

- Finally, Paula Cocozza writes about the unreasonable expectation of perfection being placed on young adults. And John Lancaster comments on the contrast between the unrealistic assumptions and expectations underlying far too much economic theory, and the reality of the human condition.