Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Moscrop makes the case for a long-overdue inheritance tax in Canada:

Over time, if left unchecked, capitalism facilitates the pooling of wealth — cash, property, business ownership, investments — among a select few. This is as true in Canada as anywhere else. That pooling implies not just the concentration of wealth but also the concentration of authority, influence, proximity to decision-makers, and all the other tactical tools it takes to get things done the way you want them done.

That concentration of power ultimately undermines democracy. When a small elite hog the wealth and the power, the rest of the people are either marginalized or shut out altogether.

The most obscene way that wealth is made is through large-scale inheritance. Passing along wealth facilitates the concentration of resources in the hands of the few, generation over generation. In Canada, inheritance is a serious problem that prevents not just equal outcome but even equal opportunity.

- Wanyee Li highlights how soaring housing prices in Vancouver have made it nearly impossible for middle- and working-class citizens to become homeowners. And Ryan Cooper points out the role social housing needs to play in building cohesive and functional cities.

- Nick Loenen discusses the value of an electoral system which encourages cooperation and genuine majoritarianism rather than artificially assigning absolute power to one leader with a minority of the total party vote.

- Meanwhile, in a prime example of how artificial majorities lead to abuses of centralized power, Mike de Souza exposes how the Libs allowed Kinder Morgan to raid the public treasury without keeping anybody informed of their plans. And David Sirota reports on Donald Trump's latest scheme to hand free money to banksters at public expense.

- Felice Frayer reports on a new study showing the connection between on-the-job injuries and opioid deaths.

- Finally, while the Saskatchewan Party tries to wish away its Global Transportation Hub scandal, Geoff Leo reminds us of just 20 of the outstanding questions about the fiasco while finding nobody willing to answer them.

[Edit: fixed typo.]