Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Denny Carter discusses how Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez is the ultimate "kitchen table" campaigner - even as she's wrongly treated as being out-of-touch by people who want to ensure it's the boardroom table that dominates politics. And Marina Requena-i-Mora, Dan Brockington and Forrest Fleischman find that lower income correlates with stronger concern for environmental issues (likely due to the fact that marginalized people are also the victims of environmental inequaliy and neglect). 

- Tim Dickinson highlights just a few of the nastiest attacks on the public in Donald Trump's murder budget. Jason Sattler calls out the Trump regime for setting the future on fire (both literally and figuratively). Jennifer Rubin discusses how the Trump administration is completely detached from reality, while Margaret Sullivan comments on its attacks on any institution which could preserve people's connection to the real world. 

- Kate Aronoff discusses how Republicans are aiming to subject people to death by heat stroke. And Ames Alexander points out the corporate interests making cities far more dangerous in order to keep profiting from "dark roof" products. 

- The Canadian Press reports on ACORN Canada's work pushing for tenant protections from extreme heat. And Elliot Goodell Ugalde and Natalie Braun make the case to facilitate tenant organization to ensure renters can engage in collective action when governments don't properly address their rights and needs. 

- Daniel Trilling's review of Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism highlights the conditions that facilitated the rise of fascist politics both in the 1920s and in the recent past. And Mona Charen points out how false bothsidesing has served to legitimize authoritarianism. 

- Finally, Matthew Renfrew offers a reminder that the Cons have stoked anti-vaccine and other anti-science sentiment - and argues that it's long past time for them to confront that dangerous tendency. And Donald Gutstein takes a look at the extreme evangelicals who have been at the core of right-wing Canadian politics for decades - and who are trying to sell us out to the Trump regime out of religious fervour today. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Bob Berwyn discusses new research showing that existing climate models may underestimate the tendency toward extremes in water levels - including both floods and droughts. Moina Spooner highlights how Africa is facing particularly severe climate impacts (while having played little role in causing the crisis), while Bruno Kalouaz examines the rapid melting of glaciers in central Asia. And Naomi Oreskes writes about the Arctic Seed Vault as an example of adaptation which is failing due to its reliance on conditions which are now a thing of the past. 

- Judi Rever discusses how Canadian forestry policy favouring corporate interests and monocultural replanting has exacerbated the danger of wildfires. And Matt Price notes that Canada's banks and high-wealth individuals are doing nothing but obstructing climate action even when presented with proposals to incorporate the reality of climate change into organizational planning. 

- Sharon Lerner reports on the Trump administration's suppression of research showing the harms caused by industrial chemicals and systematic reprisals against the scientists who dared to report accurate information. And Leah Borts-Kuperman and Urbi Khan report on Ontario's choice to allow a company with a history of exposing residential areas to ethylene oxide to treat itself as "lower-risk" and self-report its environmental impact. 

- Max Fawcett discusses how unmanageable housing costs (particularly for renters) are at the root of voter discontent with the Libs, while James Hardwick offers a reminder that inescapable consumer debt is an integral part of the financial sector's business model. And Jessica Corbett reports on the bill being proposed by Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez and Tina Smith to develop a solution on the scale of the U.S.' housing crisis by establishing a national social housing authority with a mandate to ensure everybody has an affordable home. 

- Robert Reich highlights how the U.S.' economy is set up to serve only the narrow interests of CEOs and especially-wealthy shareholders over the general population. The Canadian Health Coalition points out that Canadian voters are placing a high value on pharmacare and investment in health workers. And Jim Stanford discusses the importance of valuing public-sector work - rather than treating it solely as a cost as corporate mouthpieces tend to do. 

- Finally, Timothy Caulfield offers an alarming look into Pierre Poilievre's conspiracy vortex. And Stephen Magusiak discusses the latest example of every right-wing accusation being a confession, as Poilievre and other prominent Con-connected politicians are actively seeking to indoctrinate students with Ted Byfield's legacy of bigotry, oppression and manufactured grievance. 

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Martin Regg Cohn discusses how workers are bearing the brunt of Doug Ford's budget. Joe Light offers a reminder that Donald Trump's populist rhetoric predictably gave way to a tax scheme designed to further enrich CEOs at the expense of everybody else. And Matt Bruenig points out that U.S. workers actually pay relatively high taxes and mandatory payments while receiving paltry benefits compared to other developed countries.

- Meanwhile, Marshall Appelbaum makes the case for public disclosure of the taxes paid by each citizen.

- Noah Smith notes that a growing body of evidence is showing how government intervention is key to economic development - even if that reality never gets acknowledged by laissez-faire zealots.

- Jeff Daniels reports on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' observation that climate delay and denial are the product of privilege and removal from the immediate consequences of neglect.

- Finally, Jerry Dias discusses the choice Alberta voters have between hope and fear. Sharon Riley offers a reminder of the province's continued reliance on one-time resource revenues. And Emily Leedham and Chloe Rockarts write about the future of worker power in Alberta.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Matthew Desmond writes about the large number of economic and social benefits from paying workers a living wage. And Stephanie Akin reports on the significance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walking the talk when it comes to her own staff.

- Andrew MacLeod discusses the losses the B.C. Liberals inflicted on the province's Crown corporations - and the sad reality that reporting at the time was largely ignored by the corporate media.

- Paul Willcocks highlights the absurdity of the complaints about land speculation taxes by wealthy property owners whining they have more homes and shell corporations than they can be bothered to track in the midst of a housing crisis.

- Andrew Coyne writes about the Libs' quibbling over descriptors as it becomes increasingly clear that the Trudeau PMO put the thumb on the scale to assist SNC-Lavalin in trying to escape prosecution. And Anne Kingston comments on the significance of corporate bullies and their Lib enablers refusing to take "no" for an answer.

- Meanwhile, Caroline Criado Perez points out how safety testing based on the average male creates a world that's extremely dangerous for women.

- Finally, Doug Cuthand weighs in on the rise of right-wing violence and extremism in Canada - including the role of conservative politicians in stoking their flames.

New column day

Here (via PressReader), on the U.S.' long-overdue conversation about progressive taxes on extreme incomes and wealth - and the need for Canada to follow suit.

For further reading...
- Matthew Yglesias has offered useful background on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' high-end income tax proposal, Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax proposal, Bernie Sanders' estate tax plan, and the strong public support for the ideas. And Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman respond (PDF) to critics of wealth taxes generally, while Noah Smith compares the options.
- Lawrence Martin discusses the U.S.' newfound interest in ensuring the rich pay their fair share. Farhad Manjoo questions whether the level of wealth and inequality inherent in billionaire status can ever be justified.
- Paul Krugman comments on Howard Schultz' laughable attempt to manufacture a populist presidential campaign out of explicit class war on behalf of the uber-rich.
- Finally, Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison offer a reminder of how wealth and privilege tend to be self-perpetuating. And Meagan Day points out how massive inheritances are particularly unjustifiable when far too many people face severely limited opportunities.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Josh Mound opines that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' call for a 70 per cent tax rate on ultra-high incomes is just the beginning of a needed conversation about the morality of the extreme concentration of wealth. And Vanessa Williamson writes that beyond raising public revenue, we should also value the improvement in equality generated by a more progressive tax system:

Progressive taxation should work as a corrective tax, like tobacco taxes or a carbon tax. Sure, tobacco taxes raise some revenue for the states. But their primary purpose is to curb smoking. While a carbon tax could produce a lot of government revenue, the real point is to limit global warming pollution. In essence, corrective taxes try to put themselves out of business; if tobacco tax revenues decline because people quit smoking, or if carbon taxes stop rolling in because the economy becomes fossil-free, that is victory, not defeat.

Taxes on the wealthy discourage a different societal ill: exploitative capitalism. Progressive tax policy is a powerful corrective to economic inequality and wealth concentration. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez concluded in their seminal paper on U.S. income inequality, “steep progressive income and estate taxation” helped prevent the accumulation of immense fortunes in the middle of the 20th century. In cross-national data, moreover, there is a “strong negative correlation between top tax rates and top 1% income share.” In other words, where top tax rates are higher, the income distribution is more egalitarian – not just post-tax, but even before taxes are taken out.

That’s because progressive taxes blunt the incentives for wealthy people to overpay one another and exploit the less privileged. For instance, contemporary CEOs are often financially rewarded for what is in essence good luck: changes in market conditions that have nothing to do with their individual performance. High tax rates discourage these CEO windfalls, leaving more money available for companies to invest productively. That means higher marginal tax rates make the economy fairer and more productive — and have no negative effect on growth, no matter what billionaires at the World Economic Forum prefer to believe.
...
Early proponents of progressive tax policy knew that it was not just a revenue source. In our contemporary Gilded Age, and as our political institutions feel pushed to the breaking point, we would do well to remember that progressive taxation is a democratic reform.

- Meanwhile, Liz McCormick, Saleha Mohsin and Alexandre Tanzi report on the U.S.' trillion-dollar borrowing to fund the Trump tax giveaway to the rich. And Richard Partington writes that the UK's corporate tax handouts have likewise proven far more harmful to the public treasury than promised.

- Oscar Guardiola-Rivera highlights why the corporate-driven push for a coup in Venezuela is dangerous for all concerned. But Joshua Goodman, Luis Alonso Lugo and Rob Gillies report that Canada has been at the centre of a secret push to install an unelected leader in order to facilitate resource-sector profit-taking.

- Chris Tollefson reviews three books documenting how Canada's petro-state is blocking climate progress. And Elizabeth Aguilera points out how environmental damage is inflicted on people who can't afford to leave polluted areas due to structural inequalities.

- Finally, Eric Andrew-Gee and Tavia Grant examine some of the gaps in publicly-available data about Canada and its citizens.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the lessons the Canadian progressive movement should take from the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in shaping the U.S.' political discourse:

What is so crucial to Ocasio-Cortez’s potential—as well as the sheer hatred she inspires among the right—is the simple fact that she acknowledges the class conflict inherent within a capitalist society. She wants to build a broad coalition, to be sure, but she knows that it will never include the very wealthiest, and so—unlike many Democrats—she isn’t bothering with the political charade. This is why—over the tut-tutting of much of the pundit class—she has proposed a 70% top marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, a plan which, however unpopular with the 1%, is supported by the broad electorate. Likewise, her Green New Deal is a bold attempt to wed an impending climate crisis to a capitalist system with undemocratic and chaotic forms of production and distribution. In her view, the masses of regular people must assert their democratic priorities over the rich and their unearned wealth. If this is class conflict, than Ocasio-Cortez seems perfectly willing to embrace the branding and run with it.
...
The lesson in my view is clear. The elites will never back a concerted push to build a just, equal, and democratic economy, and no amount of niceties and respectability will get them to: they must be defeated through a determined political effort that unites the many against the few.
...
It must be put clearly that class conflict is a reality in this country, too; that the economic elite have never supported the CCF-NDP, and they never will; and that we’ll be branded as class-warriors and socialists no matter what our policies, however ambitious or modest. We need to embrace the image we have, and not be ashamed of it. We need to take the progressive policies already on our books, and put them front-and-centre. We need to stand with allies like Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, who are fighting similar fights, and we need to show Canadians that when push comes to shove, we have a vision for this country which is different than what they’ll get from the Conservatives, Liberals, and Greens. Certainly, when it comes to recent attacks on the right to strike and bargain collectively, the NDP has been workers’ only consistent ally, but we need to not only play defence, but go on the attack for the society we want to build. And if the cats get grumpy, and cry class warfare? Let them. After all, what’s wrong with battling every day to make the lives of the working-class better against those fighting tooth and nail to stop us?

- And Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman highlight the role a progressive high-end income tax could play in limiting extreme inequality.

- Meanwhile, Hugh Son and Brian Schwartz point out the inevitable counterattack from the wealthiest few against any meaningful move toward equality. And Anand Giridharadas warns that tech-sector magnates in particular are trying to give the impression of addressing social needs while locking in their wealth and power.

- Trish Garner discusses the progress British Columbia has made in addressing poverty, along with the long road left to travel before the scourge of social deprivation is eliminated. And Laurie Monsbraaten reports on some of the shattered expectations and individual precarity resulting from Doug Ford's cancellation of even a tiny basic income pilot project in Ontario.

- Finally, Alastair Spriggs reports on the World Economic Forum's recognition that even the economic fallout from climate change demands a concerted transition strategy. And David Suzuki writes that Canadian public perceptions have been thoroughly manipulated by a combination of corporate and public fossil fuel propaganda.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Larry Elliott reports on Oxfam's latest study on wealth inequality, showing that 26 extremely rich people now own as much as half of the world's population. And Ronald Quaroni notes that half of Saskatchewan families are on the brink of insolvency - the highest level of any province in an already-bleak national survey.

- Given that inequality and individual insecurity, it should be little surprise that trust in government and social institutions is eroding (as Louis Putterman points out). And Matt Taibbi highlights how the U.S.' political establishment fails to understand the public's understandable frustration:

I have no idea if Ocasio-Cortez will or will not end up being a great politician. But it’s abundantly clear that her mere presence is unmasking many, if not most, of the worst and most tired Shibboleths of the capital.

Moreover, she’s laying bare the long-concealed fact that many of their core policies are wildly unpopular, and would be overturned in a heartbeat if we could somehow put them all to direct national referendum.

Take the tax proposal offered by Ocasio-Cortez, which would ding the top bracket for 70 percent taxes on all income above $10 million.

The idea inspired howls of outrage, with wrongest-human-in-history Alan Greenspan peeking out of his crypt to call it a “terrible idea,” Wisconsin’s ex-somebody Walker saying a 5^th grader would know it was “unfair,” and human anti-weathervane Harry Reid saying “you have to be careful” because voters don’t want “radical change quickly.”

Except polls show the exact opposite. Almost everyone wants to soak the rich. A joint survey by The Hill and Harris X showed 71 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Independents, and even 45 percent of Republicans endorse the Ocasio-Cortez plan.

Is it feasible? It turns out it might very well be, as even Paul Krugman, who admits AOC’s rise makes him “uneasy,” said in a recent column. He noted the head of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated the top rate should be even higher, perhaps even 80 percent.

We’ve been living for decades in a universe where the basic tenets of supply-side economics — that there’s a massive and obvious benefit for all in dumping piles of money in the hands of very rich people — have gone more or less unquestioned.

Now we see: once a popular, media-savvy politician who doesn’t owe rich donors starts asking such questions, the Potemkin justifications for these policies can tumble quickly.

- Andrea Janus reports on the widespread food waste in Canada - particularly within the food industry rather than at the consumer level. And Daniel Tencer examines how Canada's housing market has become thoroughly unaffordable for far too many.

- Finally, any Saskatchewan readers are encouraged to participate in what little public consultation the Moe government is offering when it comes to the province's library system - and particularly to point out that libraries do far more than merely lending materials.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Economic Policy Institute charts how government policy is exacerbating inequality in the U.S. And Sam Pizzigati discusses how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading a much-needed discussion about ensuring that wealthy people pay their fair share - and notes that the arguments against a more progressive tax system are as empty as ever.

- Greg Marchildon and Andrew Jackson map out a path toward a national pharmacare program, concluding that a single national program would be both easier to implement and more beneficial in the long run compared to a more fragmented system. 

- Tanya Talaga highlights how Justin Trudeau is laughably downplaying his government's choice to fight Indigenous communities in the name of fossil fuel development rather than making any good faith effort toward reconciliation. And Sarah Petz reports on the sudden and inexplicable apprehension of an Indigenous child from a Winnipeg hospital - and the threats that any continued will only result in further difficulty trying to reunite the baby with her family.

- Meanwhile, Damian Carrington reports on a new study showing that air pollution common in urban areas around the work is just as dangerous to as smoking.

- Finally, Gaby Hinsliff argues that a focus on "make do and mend" rather than constant new consumption would have both environmental and economic benefits for the general public.