Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Martha Gill offers a reminder that the stakes of any climate change policy are nothing less than our ultimate survival. And Julia Musto discusses the warnings from climate scientists as to what a deliberately destructive U.S. climate policy may mean around the globe. 

- Meanwhile, George Monbiot makes the case for a progressive revolution to save a habitable Earth from an increasingly powerful array of forces bent on destroying it. And Teen Vogue offers some thoughts of empowerment and encouragement in light of the challenges to come.  

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes that the ultimate failure of U.S. Democrats was the lack of any apparent escape from the trap of a corporate-controlled economy and society - even as Donald Trump intends to make matters far worse. And Jeet Heer points out how a choice to act as the party of establishmentarianism left the Democrats with little to say to voters who wanted change.

- Emmett MacFarlane discusses what a Trump administration acting with absolute impunity will mean for Canada - while noting that at least some of our critical institutions haven't yet been undermined like their American counterparts. And Owen Schalk recognizes that Canada has too often served as a lackey to American imperial power - though it's hard to imagine a more important time to work on breaking that pattern.  

- Finally, Daniel Kudla discusses what has made Housing First an effective plan for eliminating homelessness - while noting that the typical neoliberal obsession with tying it to market mechanisms and punitive screening criteria undermines its value.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Hilary Beaumont and Nina Lakhani report on the fossil fuel lobby's pressure on U.S. governments to impose draconian anti-protest laws to prevent climate activists from being heard. darryll k. jones points out the dangers facing environmental activists around the globe at the hands of mining corporations and the governments who serve them. And Robert Reich writes that Elon Musk's control over crucial infrastructure - and his complete lack of compunction in using it to settle personal scores or strongarm governments - represents an unacceptable security risk for the U.S. 

- Tamara Palmer discusses the embarrassing lack of recycling of electronic waste - though it's worth noting how manufacturers put far more resources into pushing people to buy new devices than allowing them to recycle old ones. And Rosa Galvez makes the case for an international treaty on plastic pollution.

- Meanwhile, Richard Murphy argues that it's long past time for the UK to abolish "freeports" intended to allow corporations to operate outside the law - while noting that there's been little apparent interest in taking up that option in any event. And Aditya Chakrabortty reminds UK Labour that voters turfed the Cons for trashing public services in the name of catering to the corporate sector - meaning that they're not likely to be pleased with continued austerity from the government which ran on the need for change. 

- Finally, Lorraine Carpenter reports on the spread of fake X accounts in Quebec - following the pattern of similar accounts parroting Con messaging. And Don Braid and Jason Markusoff each discuss how Danielle Smith is catering to the most extreme wing of the UCP, while Jeremy Appel notes that there's little to distinguish those demands from the most dishonest and bigoted faces of the MAGA movement. 

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mary Ward and Lucy Carroll report on New South Wales' warning of the potential for COVID-19 reinfection as the newer Omicron variants become dominant. Zoe Swank et al. find that people with long COVID may have viral reservoirs in their bodies for a year or more after first being diagnosed, while David Holdsworth et al. discover cognitive deterioration comparable to that expected from 10 years of aging after only six months of long COVID. And Jennifer Couzin-Frankel discusses the main theories as to the causes of long COVID symptoms.  

- David Macdonald writes that any recovery from the 2020 recession is unprecedented in its combination of massive increases in corporate profits and declines in compensation for workers. Matt Trinder discusses how real wages are falling off a cliff in the UK, while Russell Napier calls out central banks for putting a thumb on the scale to push even more money into the hands of capital rather than labour. And Aditya Chakrabortty writes that an important part of the pushback will involve identifying corporate vulnerability to public and union pressure, rather than relying on legislative action alone. 

- Ed Burmilla writes that what should be the end of the neoliberal era has been delayed for want of an alternative. And the continued entrenchment of a failed economic system can largely be traced to Sandor Demetor's observations about political and regulatory capture, as the people with the power to act on the recognition of the dangers of serving corporations have financial incentives not to. 

- Finally, Claire Parker highlights the devastating effect of air pollution on public health. Oliver Milman points out the staggeringly large number of lives at stake as the U.S. hems and haws on any climate action. And Stephanie Hogan notes that even Canada's housing stock is far from equipped to deal with the warming and extreme weather that's already locked in (to say nothing of what we're continuing to cause with prolonged fossil fuel use). 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ryan Tumulty reports on Theresa Tam's warning that Canada may be headed for another COVID wave this fall. CBC News reports on the warning from Fahad Razakthat the province shouldn't have lifted mask mandates this week, while Jennifer Lee points out that Alberta is facing its deadliest pandemic year to date. Adam MacNeil discusses the need for people to serve as the immune response to a disease which will otherwise circulate unabated. And Anneli Uuskula et al. find that COVID infection results in three times the risk of mortality in a year compared to people who are able to avoid the coronavirus, while Matthew Durstenfeld et al. study how long COVID also reduces exercise capacity. 

- David Hencke reports on the billions of dollars in personal protective equipment which has been deemed unfit for use after being supplied by UK Con-connected businesses. And Emily Leedham reports that Manitoba is among the provinces which saw a conservative government hand massive contracts to businesses affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren for no remotely apparent reason. 

- Rani Molla writes that some of the people being required to return to office settings are gaining little besides long commutes as a result. 

- Rob Merrick reports on Boris Johnson's demand that UK workers bear the brunt of inflation (worsened by his party's Brexit) by accepting pay cuts in the midst of soaring prices. And Nadia Whittome writes that the proper response is instead a living wage to ensure workers can afford a reasonable standard of living. 

- Rishika Pardikar reports on how fossil fuel giants are using trade agreements to bully governments into avoiding effective climate policy - and collecting massive windfalls from those which dare to defy them. Carbon Tracker examines how the resources set aside for remediation of wells in the Gulf of Mexico (as in so many other places) fall far short of what's needed, even as oil companies rake in massive profits. And Mickey Djuric reports on the Moe government's failure to ensure resource companies pay what they owe Saskatchewan for extracting natural resources. 

- Finally, Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the collapse of the UK's collapsing political order - along with the hope (however remote) that something better will emerge from the wreckage.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Phil Tank offers a reminder that Saskatchewan's citizens shouldn't follow the lead of its government in wrongly pretending the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Sumathi Reddy writes about the growing recognition that reinfection - with a risk of both severe and long-term symptoms every time - is going to be the reality for people who fail to take precautions. And Keren Landman discusses a few of the questions about long COVID which have yet to be answered. 

- Peter Hannam talks to some of the economists pushing back against the attempt to suppress wages as a response to inflation in Australia. And Ethan Wolff-Mann warns that the U.S. Federal Reserve is effectively pressuring employers not to hire workers, sacrificing labour in the name of an issue which (as Michael Roberts notes) is almost entirely the result of corporate greed and profiteering. 

- Aditi Mukherji writes that putting water at the heart of climate policy will help point the way toward thoroughly and equitably addressing the climate crisis. And Zoya Teirstein points out that after decades of cynical delay tactics by the oil industry and its bought-and-paid-for political puppets when there was time for a gradual transition, there aren't many climate options left which don't involve some trade-offs. 

- That said, David Suzuki notes that there's plenty of room for adapting personal practices to be good for both ourselves and our planet. 

- Mitchell Thompson and Luke LeBrun report on Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce's participation in a "slave auction" as a leader of his frat house. And Stephanie Fung, Anna Liu, karine ng and Chris Ramsaroop discuss how the pandemic has exposed the racism which remains to be identified and uprooted in all kinds of communities. 

- Finally, Aditya Chakrabortty calls out just one of the systematic campaigns of targeted abuse generated by the UK's right-wing hatred machine. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Grace Blakeley comments on the connection between neoliberal ideology, and the replacement of even the possibility of collective action with an assumption that we're only in it for ourselves. 

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the need to eliminate poverty in all of its forms - including by dealing with it head-on rather than slicing it into a series of less significant problems. And Gaby Hinsliff reminds us of the work that will need to be done to ensure a COVID generation doesn't miss out on the opportunity to engage in basic socialization and development. 

- Meanwhile, Peter Goodman reports on research showing that the world as a whole will be better off it we work on ensuring the distribution of vaccines based on need rather than national wealth.

- Daniel Oran and Eric Topol write about the consequences of being wrong in basic assumptions about the coronavirus - such as the question of whether it's possible to be contagious without symptoms (as we now know to be the case). Elizabeth Gulino discusses some of the changes we'll need to make in response to more contagious strains of COVID-19, while Patricia Treble points out that we're likely not managing to fully test and trace for the UK variant which we know has arrived in Canada. And Armine Yalnizyan offers a reminder of the desperate need for paid sick days to allow employees to avoid contributing to community spread out of financial necessity.

- Finally, Jen Gerson recognizes that Jason Kenney's belligerence is doing nothing but embarrassing himself and his province. And Scott Schmidt calls out Kenney's refusal to answer for the harm he's inflicting on Alberta.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- PressProgress highlights the latest example of the obscene concentration of wealth in Canada, as a mere 45 people own more than the GDP of over half the country's provinces and territories.

- Paul Precht dispels any myth that Alberta's anti-tax ideology has anything to do with its economic development. And the Canadian Press confirms with the former CEO of AIMCO that any move to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan has nothing to do with pension security or efficiency.

- Gary Younge comments on the unfair advantage the UK Cons get from that country's corporate media. And Aditya Chakrabortty notes that the Cons have also used public money to lie about the damage done by their cruel austerity measures.

- Mehreen Khan reports on the Netherlands' shift away from exceptionally high speed limits due to their climate impact. And Ben Parfitt points out the large public subsidies for fossil fuels in British Columbia - largely due to the continuation of credits which were once intended to spur unproven types of development, but became seen as an entitlement by the industry.

- Finally, Jerry Dias and Andrew Bernhard write that it's long past time for foreign media corporations which make massive profits in Canada to start contributing - both by paying taxes, and by generating Canadian content.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the consequences of the UK's choice not to fund its or social infrastructure:

We are right in the middle of an infrastructure breakdown – we just haven’t named it yet. You’ll know what I mean when we list the component parts. More than 760 youth clubs have shut across the UK since 2012. A pub closes every 12 hours. Nearly 130 libraries were scrapped last year, and those that survive in England have lopped off 230,000 opening hours.

Each of the above is a news story. Each stings a different group: the books trade, the real-ale aficionados, the trade unions. But knit them together and a far darker picture emerges. Britain is being stripped of its social infrastructure: the institutions that make up its daily life, the buildings and spaces that host friends and gently push strangers together. Public parks are disappearing. Playgrounds are being sold off. High streets are fast turning to desert. These trends are national, but their greatest force is felt in the poorest towns and suburbs, the most remote parts of the countryside, where there isn’t the footfall to lure in the businesses or household wealth to save the local boozer.
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When it comes to transport or energy or sewage, Britain has a National Infrastructure Commission that monitors the country’s needs and guides parliament on where to direct spending. After all, the quality of such hard infrastructure influences where multinationals set up shop: it is money-making. But parks and libraries don’t generate cash. Social infrastructure has no lobby, no registry of assets and certainly no government agency. No Whitehall official monitors how much of it has closed or withered away – that relies on civil society groups to file freedom of information requests or badger town halls with survey. Everyone knows we need it, yet just as our economic model prizes shareholder returns over investment in the National Grid, so our politics relies on drawing in the voters with unfeasibly low taxes. Until one day, something breaks and all hell breaks loose.

So here is a suggestion for Jeremy Corbyn or Nicola Sturgeon or Adam Price or whoever else fancies it. Talk about the importance of social infrastructure. Promise to set up a commission explicitly to audit what we have and help protect it. Commit public money to it, alongside gentle pressure on the private sector to do its bit. That way, we can publicly mark the public institutions we all know we need – and show the esteem due to the people who keep them going and use them. The spirit we need is that summed up by the librarian who rhapsodises to Klinenberg about his branch: “The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognise it in them too.”

- Chris Varcoe reports that the UCP's corporate tax giveaways are predictably leading to no economic benefit to anybody other than shareholders and executives. And Jessica Elgot reports on UK Labour's plans to give municipalities the power to restore abandoned shops to public use.

- Andrew Mitrovica highlights the significance of Justin Trudeau's ethical violations. The Globe and Mail's editorial board lists the many failings which went into the Libs' attempt to twist laws and constitutional principles to serve SNC-Lavalin. And Andrew Coyne zeroes in on the deception involved in Trudeau's interventions - including toward the Attorney General he'd appointed to uphold the rule of law.

- Ben Smee reports on a prime example on the contempt fossil fuel spokesflacks have for the lives of people affected by a climate breakdown. And Rick Salutin calls attention to Canada's appalling support for anti-democratic corporate repression in Honduras.

- Finally, Oliver Franklin-Wallis discusses the limited effectiveness of plastic recycling.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Joel Connelly reports on a new B.C. study showing the breadth and depth of the effects of a climate breakdown. Reuters examines the threat of water bankruptcy looming over a quarter of the Earth's population - including a substantial part of the Canadian Prairies. David Suzuki writes that climate deniers are having a perpetually more difficult time avoiding reality. And Charlie Smith discusses the impact the Extinction Rebellion has had around the world as it looks to make its mark in Canada.

- But Sarah Cox notes that reckless forestry and natural gas approvals are essentially choosing to facilitate environmental destruction and potentially species extinction. And Steven Hsieh reports on the Koch brothers' spending to shout down even the most modest of local transit plans in the name of maximizing the burning of fossil fuels (and the resulting damage to our planet).

- Arthur White-Crummey reports on Scott Moe's choice to turn away federal funding for major projects in Regina and Saskatoon solely for the sake of picking a political fight. And Mia Rabson discusses how Manitoba school boards have had to go around their provincial government due to Brian Pallister's similar decision to prioritize naked partisanship over the public good.

- Finally, Aditya Chakrabortty writes that economic policies designed to serve the super-rich have turned most of the UK's population into losers. Labor411 notes that Lowe's has joined the ranks of the corporations who have responded to Donald Trump's tax giveaways by slashing jobs. And Leslie Josephs and Michael Wayland write that workers are still trying to find some way to win a share of the windfall handed to the U.S.' wealthiest few.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the dangers of accepting gross inequality based on the hope that billionaires will make up in charity what they fail to contribute in tax revenue:

For the super-rich, giving is really taking. Taking power, that is, from the rest of society. The billionaires will get exclusive access to the “vision” for the reconstruction of a national landmark and they can veto those plans, because if they don’t like them they can withhold their cash. Money is always the most powerful casting vote, and they have it. Never mind that much of this cash actually comes from the public, as French law grants a whopping 66% tax relief on any donation – the power is entirely private. The annual cap on such contributions doubtless constitutes a prudent reason for the big donors to stagger their generosity.

Whether in France or Britain or the US, the rich give money to the grand institutions at the heart of our cultures to secure their social status in plaques and photo opportunities. In much the same way, they fund our political parties, then enjoy the kickbacks when they form a government. As Julia Cagé, an economist at Paris’s SciencesPo, points out, some of the same people pledging donations to Notre Dame were also among those who funded Macron’s rise to the presidency. In her recent award-winning book, to be published in English next year as The Price of Democracy, Cagé calculates that 600 wealthy people in France gave between €3m and €4.5m to Macron’s election campaign. In other words, 2% of all donors made up between 40 % and 60% of all En Marche funding. Within a few months, the new president cut taxes on the wealthy, giving his richest donors “a return of nearly 60,000% on their investment”. Just as with Notre Dame – a tiny deposit, a lot of influence and one hell of a payout.

- And Stephanie Bailey's observations as to how wealthier people can play a large part in mitigating our climate crisis are noteworthy primarily for the lack of any apparent action.

- In turn, the consequences of the failure to rein in greenhouse gas emissions caused primarily by the wealthiest have included record temperatures around the globe, along with unprecedented heat and wildfires in the Arctic region. 

- Rick Paulas makes the case to stop directing public resources toward restricting access to transit, and instead ensure that basic transit is freely available.

- And finally, Emily Guendelsberger discusses how an increasing number of jobs are calculated to cause "chronic mild stress" which inevitably results in employee burnout (but avoids the possibility that workers will have access to any social supports).

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Rick Smith and Ken Neumann write about the importance of developing a Green New Deal that includes participation from (and protection for) the workers affected by an economic transition.

- Meanwhile, Aditya Chakrabortty notes that the oil-backed right's personal attacks on Greta Thunberg and other politically engaged youth only serve to confirm their utter lack of anything constructive to offer in any political discussion. (See also Andrew Scheer's continued demurral in offering even a hint of a climate plan.)

- Peter Cary and Allan Holmes examine the paltry return workers received on billions in corporate tax cuts from the Trump administration. And James Moore reports on the "poverty premium" being extracted from the people who can least afford to pay it in the UK.

- On the bright side, the CCPA studies the living wage in Vancouver and finds that the Horgan government's child care policy alone has managed to reduce the effective cost of living by $1.41 per hour.

- Finally, Daniel Tencer reports on the Canadian resource companies using international trade deals to bully other countries into abandoning environmental protections. And Sarah Rieger reports on the 4,700 wells dumped into the public's lap for remediation by the failure of a single Alberta gas company.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Paul Krugman offers a reminder that the gap between the 1% and the rest of us is far larger than most people are permitted to see:

(T)here’s also a big difference between being affluent, even very affluent, and having the kind of wealth that puts you in a completely separate social universe. It’s a difference summed up three decades ago in the movie “Wall Street,” when Gordon Gekko mocks the limited ambitions of someone who just wants to be “a $400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable.”

Even now, most Americans don’t seem to realize just how rich today’s rich are. At a recent event, my CUNY colleague Janet Gornick was greeted with disbelief when she mentioned in passing that the top 25 hedge fund managers make an average of $850 million a year. But her number was correct.
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Why should we care about the very rich? It’s not about envy, it’s about oligarchy.

With great wealth comes both great power and a separation from the concerns of ordinary citizens. What the very rich want, they often get; but what they want is often harmful to the rest of the nation. There are some public-spirited billionaires, some very wealthy liberals. But they aren’t typical of their class.

The very rich don’t need Medicare or Social Security; they don’t use public education or public transit; they may not even be that reliant on public roads (there are helicopters, after all). Meanwhile, they don’t want to pay taxes.
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(W)e should be able to understand both that the affluent in general should be paying more in taxes, and that the very rich are different from you and me ­— and Bernie Sanders. The class divide that lies at the root of our political polarization is much starker, much more extreme than most people seem to realize. 

- Sean Coughlan discusses how hollowing out of the middle class is destabilizing both our economy and our political environment. And Brent Patterson highlights the need to challenge an economic model based on selling what's shiny and new rather than building and preserving what matters.

- Crawford Kilian views the Notre Dame cathedral fire as a vivid example of the dangers of neglecting the maintenance of our social goods, while Aditya Chakrabortty notes that the ability of a few ultra-wealthy people to throw around hundreds of millions of dollars in response shows that there are plenty of resources available to actually take better care of ourselves and our world. And Carol Kroeger comments on the need for our political leaders to similarly pay far more attention to helping people, and far less to manipulating them to preserve their own power.

- Finally, Anne Kingston laments Canada's backsliding in lacking any female jurisdictional leaders, while noting that broken promises of proportional representation are a significant part of the problem. And Melanie Green discusses the harassment of Rubab Qureshi in response to her mere recognition that Islamophobia is a problem.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the belated recognition among the world's most privileged few that they can't but their way out of the fundamental issues facing humankind. And Branko Milanovic highlights the Davos set's lip service to combating inequality as long as it does nothing to affect the imbalances in their favour.

- The London School of Economics points out Jonathan Mijs' work on the connection between social divisions and relative popular acceptance of inequality. And Polly Toynbee writes about the right's exploitation of that link:

Both rich and poor delude themselves that they are ordinary. But telling people the facts doesn’t change their attitudes: increasingly they cling to a moral belief that people rise by merit, sinking for lack of it. Spend time talking to people using food banks or in Citizens Advice offices knocked down by benefit sanctions, and too often you hear people absorbing the blame. “I should have tried harder at school,” is a frequent refrain, as if no other forces were at play. Talk to the mega-rich – I once conducted focus groups of earners up to £10m – and they are wilfully ignorant about their super-privilege, unshakable in believing their superior merit.

The right captured the story, the emotions, the moral framing: social democrats need to seize it back with a narrative of immorality that is more compelling. The British Social Attitudes survey suggests a swing back towards empathy with the swelling numbers of poor people – including more than 4 million children. But still inheritance tax remains the most reviled of all taxes. The right forever tries to prove poor people are more stupid by nature than the rich, but Professor Steve Jones, a celebrated geneticist, when asked about the heritability of intelligence, replies deftly that the most important heritable trait, by miles, is wealth.

- David Sirota interviews Anand Giridharadas about the pitfalls of relying on elite philanthropy rather than democratic decision-making.

- The Australia Institute examines how tax giveaways to businesses accomplish nothing. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy discusses how a wealth tax can and should work south of the border.

- Finally, Sammy Hudes reports on a report prepared for Calgary's city council showing how the privatization of public services creates massive new risks to the public while only benefiting the corporations who are able to extract profits.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Robert Cribb, Patti Sonntag, Michael Wrobel, P.W. Elliott and Carolyn Jarvis examine the Saskatchewan Party government's utter refusal to monitor or regulate pollution caused by the oil industry - and the people who have been kept at risk as a result. And Geoff Leo takes a look at the anti-regulation and pro-austerity dogma that led to the collapse of a brand-new bridge in the RM of Clayton.

- Leslie Hook and Caroline Binham report on the warning by central banks around the globe of the need for financial decisions to both minimize and mitigate the risk of climate breakdown. And Fatima Syed reports on the billions of dollars Ontario will lose as a result of Doug Ford's destruction of cap-and-trade carbon pricing.

- Annika Koljonen points out that while the U.S. and UK are seeing stagnant or falling life expectancies as a result of corporatist political decisions, Finland is seeing the largest improvements among affluent countries in the world due to needed social investment. And Aditya Chakrabortty discusses how even the IMF has had to recognize that the UK's privatization schemes were nothing more than a neoliberal scam:

Let’s start with the IMF itself. Last week it published a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn in the red. Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and Kenya, only Portugal’s finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the roof.

Almost as startling are the IMF’s reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has similar North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net worth has soared over the past decade.

 

The other big reason for the UK’s financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a “fiscal illusion”. British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, “increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government’s asset holdings”.

Throughout the austerity decade, ministers and economists have pushed for spending cuts by pointing to the size of the government’s annual overdraft, or budget deficit. Yet there are two sides to a balance sheet, as all accountants know and this IMF work recognises. The same goes for our public realm: if Labour’s John McDonnell gets into No 11 and renationalises the railways, that would cost tens of billions – but it would also leave the country with assets worth tens of billions that provided a regular income.

Instead, what this IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations.

- Finally, Maryse Zeidler reports on the Elizabeth Fry Society's push to ensure that the Canada Child Benefit is actually accessible to the vulnerable children who need it most.

Tuesday Evening Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty comments on the stunning turnaround experienced by the UK city of Preston after it started making a concerted effort to use public money to benefit citizens and local development.

- Meanwhile, CNN Wires notes that in contrast, massize Amazon warehouses don't do anything to add to net employment. The Hamilton Spectator laments the fact that Ontario's government has decided to hand Loblaws an effective monopoly on transit cards. And Landon Thomas Jr. writes about the World Bank's new role pushing P3s as an added means of extracting wealth from countries which are already short on resources of their own.

- Amina Zafar reports on some cuts to Canadian generic prescription drug prices arising out of an agreement not to pursue a tendering process for a few years. But Vik Adhopia notes that we'll still end up paying far more than in New Zealand among other jurisdictions where tendering processes are actually used - meaning that there's still every reason to push for a more fair deal for the public.

- Tom Parkin discusses the need for stronger protection against sexual harassment beyond what the Libs have introduced so far. And Nathan Heller points out that precarious and gig workers are particularly vulnerable.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail questions the Libs' decision to shield incumbents from any accountability in their ridings.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Julian Cribb reports on new research as to mass exposure to chemicals and pollutants:

Almost every human being is now contaminated in a worldwide flood of industrial chemicals and pollutants – most of which have never been tested for safety – a leading scientific journal has warned.

Regulation and legal protection for today’s citizens from chemical poisons can no longer assure our health and safety, according to a hard-hitting report in the journal PLOS Biology, titled “Challenges in Environmental Health: Closing the Gap between Evidence and Regulations”.

The report describes a chemical oversight system corrupted from its outset in the 1970s when 60,000 chemicals were registered for use in the US, mostly without being safety tested. Many of these chemicals were subsequently adopted as ‘safe’ around the world.

Over the years, public health protection has stagnated – despite mounting scientific evidence that many chemicals are damaging whole classes of organisms, say report editors Liza Gross and Linda Birnbaum.
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“Evidence has emerged that chemicals in widespread use can cause cancer and other chronic diseases, damage reproductive systems, and harm developing brains at low levels of exposure once believed to be harmless. Such exposures pose unique risks to children at critical windows of development - risks that existing regulations fail to consider.”

The report underlines a recent finding by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health which concluded nine million deaths (or 16% of the total) every year worldwide are due to diseases caused by the human chemical environment – 15 times the number killed in wars.

- In another reminder of the consequences of failing to take into account the future costs of exploitative industries, Alex MacPherson reports on the nine-figure (and mounting) public costs arising out of the abandoned Gunnar uranium mine. And Joe Romm reports on NASA's latest research showing the connection between fracking and global warming.

- Charlotte Aubin discusses Africa's energy transition which figures to see long-term development oriented toward renewable sources (even in the face of continued subsidies of fossil fuels in the near term). And Agence France-Presse takes note of the price advantage clean energy already holds compared to burning fossil fuels.

- Meanwhile, Naomi Klein writes that New York City's divestment from the oil sector (and concurrent claim for climate damages) may offer a turning point in the balance of power between citizens and the oil industry. And Gary Mason writes that Canada's climate change laggards - including Brad Wall and his heirs - are kidding themselves about the shape of future development.

- Finally, Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the imminent collapse of the UK's largest P3 profiteer - which also plays a prominent role in the privatization of Canadian infrastructure and public services.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the Republicans' tax scam is designed for the sole purpose of further enriching their already-wealthy donors, while Theodoric Meyer notes that it also stands to make loads of money for lobbyists.

- Jagmeet Singh makes the case for Canada to work on a tax system which is more fair to citizens - making for a far more constructive contribution than Susan Delacourt's effort to stoke anti-tax sentiment for little apparent reason. And Patrick Collinson comments on the need for a tax system which ensures that inheritances don't exacerbate existing inequality:

Firstly, let’s call a halt to the nonsense that the money goes to kids, or to young adults needing a hand up the property ladder. The average age at which someone receives an inheritance is 61. These people are certainly not “kids” – indeed, many of the recipients of unearned inheritances (largely created by property inflation, not personal endeavour) will be grandparents themselves.

Now let’s look at who receives the money. The report reveals how it doesn’t really go to those who need a leg-up – it goes to those who already have assets. Resolution looked at the millennial generation – generally those seen as reaching their late teens and early 20s after 2000 – and found that the ones who haven’t got on the property ladder are likely to be those whose parents also never made it. In contrast, 83% of millennials who have bought their homes have parents who also bought their own homes.

You can see where inheritance is going. What it does is simply entrench inequality and make the divide between the housing haves and have-nots wider.
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Social mobility risks grinding to a near halt, making it much more difficult to become wealthy from one’s own endeavours. Society will, more than ever, be run for the benefit of a trustafarian gerontocracy of the 60-plus who inherited property, not a society where entrepreneurial vigour counts.

- Owen Jones points out the combination of skyrocketing prices and declining service in the UK's rail industry as just another example of the consequences of ideological privatization.

- Aditya Chakrabortty discusses how the UK's social programs have been cut and rendered impossible to navigate in order to divert money to the Conservatives' tax slashing.

- Finally, Elizabeth Schulze examines Finland's basic income experiment after a year, and finds that the main question being raised is whether to go further in extending income security.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty describes the Grenfell Tower fire as nothing less than social murder of the UK's poor:

Austerity is at the heart of the Grenfell story. Think of the firefighters, who have seen stations closed and colleagues laid off by May, when she was home secretary. Consider the nurses treating the dying and the maimed, who will be on lower pay now than they were in 2009.

Most of all, remember this: the cuts made since 2010 were the poor picking up the tab for the venality of rich bankers. The two are jammed up next to each other in Kensington and Chelsea, one of the richest and most unequal patches of land in the world. Just minutes away from Grenfell, you can find a house for sale at £30m (albeit “in need of full modernisation”). The residents of the investment-starved Tower died last week did so partly because of the greed of their neighbours.

To judge by the nods and winks since the election, May’s government is preparing for the beginning of the end of austerity. I’ll believe it when I see teaching assistants getting a pay rise or benefits for the working-age poor going up. In any case, it will be too late to undo the damage already done. In their book, The Violence of Austerity, the academics Vickie Cooper and David Whyte collect the evidence. Together with their co-authors, they record how the disability assessment process in England is “associated” with an extra 590 suicides. How cuts to local government funding mean that Liverpool council no longer has a single dedicated health and safety officer. How austerity has meant more people dying sooner.

Spending cuts, deregulation, outsourcing: between them they have turned a state supposedly there to protect and support citizens into a machine to make money for the rich while punishing the poor. It’s never described like that, of course. Class warfare is passed off as book-keeping. Accountability is tossed aside for “commercial confidentiality”, while profiteering is dressed up as economic dynamism. One courtesy we should pay the victims of Grenfell is to drop the glossy-brochure euphemisms. Let’s get clear what happened to them: an act of social murder, straight out of Victorian times.

- Larry Elliott reports on the Resolution Foundation's research showing that higher property values are severely exacerbating inequality in the UK. And Kate Wilson examines the realities facing Vancouver's renter class - with even full-time professionals facing the threat of imminent homelessness as housing becomes less and less affordable.

- Which goes a long way toward explaining why large numbers of B.C. voters are now eager to see Christy Clark accept her expected defeat.

- Meanwhile, Alex Hemingway offers advance warning of the anti-social hysteria which is sure to accompany a new NDP government. And Simon Wren-Lewis discusses how austerity can't be justified in honest terms.

- Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood studies the fossil fuel dependency of Canada compared to its international peers, noting in particular that there's plenty of room for developed countries to reduce their dependency while maintaining a high standard of living.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron discusses how the Trudeau Libs' foreign policy is virtually indistinguishable from the Harper Cons'.