Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jennifer La Grassa reports on the impending wave of the EG.5 COVID-19 variant, even as Phil Hahn warns that what little and belated data we have on COVID infections in the form of wastewater analysis may soon be cut off. And Ed Yong writes about the difference between ordinary tiredness and the fatigue triggered by long COVID.  

- Matthew Rosza discusses the reality that July was the hottest month in recorded human history. The Guardian publishes accounts from climate experts about the fact that where we stand now is both predictable and disastrous, while Andrew Mitrovica recognizes that future generations should see our destruction of our living environment as unforgivable. And Dimitris Dimitriadis, Joey Grostern and Sam Bright report that fossil fuel corporations are predictably using new social media to keep up their longstanding pattern of disinformation to enable continued carbon pollution. 

- Giulia Carbonaro examines how work may change in the course of a climate breakdown. And Vanessa Balintec reports on the success of four-day work week which has led many employers who tried it as a pilot project to make it a permanent feature. 

- Liam O'Connor writes about the history of streetcars in Saskatchewan, along with the prospect that a similar model could be a key element of future development. 

- Finally, Cory Doctorow highlights how fighting junk fees and abusive corporate practices should be a key element of the progressive political project. 

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jim Stanford calls out corporate apologists for blaming workers for deteriorating working conditions and stagnant wages which have resulted from deliberate policy choices:

Unemployed workers on the dole for months at a time? Clearly they aren’t looking hard enough for work. Low-wage workers stuck in dead-end jobs? Clearly they didn’t invest in their own “human capital.” Young workers facing a never-ending series of gigs? Clearly they don’t have the discipline to stick with a real job.

A new high water mark in this lamentable practice was surely set this week with a research paper from the Commonwealth Treasury. The report examined historically weak growth in Australian wages over the last several years. It proposed a novel but far-fetched explanation: workers are failing to leave their existing jobs to seek out better-paying opportunities elsewhere.
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The formal paper contained all sorts of statistical cautions and academic nuances. But that was lost on the legion of gleeful pundits who seized on its findings, pointing their accusing fingers at complacent, “stubborn” workers for their own low wages. Never mind obvious actions that could directly boost wages: things like raising the minimum wage, restoring collective bargaining (which has all but disappeared from private sector workplaces), or abolishing the Commonwealth government’s own strict two percent  limit on wage increases for its own employees.

No, it’s far easier to ascribe record-low wage growth to some perverse characteristic of the workers themselves. After all, the forces of supply and demand are always working their magic: allocating resources efficiently and ensuring everyone gets paid according to their “productivity.” If that payment isn’t enough to live on -- well, that must be your fault, not the market’s.
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(T)he insecurity and powerlessness felt by workers is no accident. It’s the deliberate outcome of a generation of labour and social policies predicated precisely on instilling fear and discipline among workers -- assuming that will lead to greater obedience and productivity. Newstart has been frozen for a generation; protections against dismissal have been dismantled; steady jobs have been casualised or converted into gigs.

In that context, there’s little hope of successfully demanding a raise from your boss: more likely, they’ll brand you a troublemaker and not renew your contract. And with strong restrictions on union activity and collective bargaining, there is little institutional possibility for workers to wield collective bargaining power.
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But never mind. The high priests of economic policy would still come up with other reason to blame the victims for their own plight -- not the system. Perhaps their choice of music. Or their insistence on eating smashed avocado for Sunday brunch. Or their bad planning in being born into families without inherited wealth.

- And in a prime example of the systemic gap between what workers get paid and what they need to survive, David Macdonald studies how the minimum wage falls far short of allowing workers to pay for housing all across Canada.

- Sam Arie writes about the reality that due to decades of corporate control and conservative denialism, it's probably too late to entirely avoid dangerous global warming. But Ashli Akins discusses the need to let the prospect of changing our current course for the better needs to overcome any sense of outright despair - even if we also can't blithely assume everything will work out for the best without substantial work.

- CBC News reports that Donald Trump has wasted no time imposing new restrictions on Canadian imports after the Libs claimed success in negotiating a new and worse version of NAFTA.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica discusses the disastrous results of Ontario's election of a right-wing populist government.

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Will McMartin writes that if we needed more evidence that Jason Kenney's trickle-down economics are nothing but a scam to concentrate more wealth in the hands of the rich, British Columbia's own moves in the same direction produced none of the promised economic boost in exchange for tax giveaways. And Angella MacEwen exposes how Kenney's tax assumptions are riddled with holes based on Canadian experience.

- Meanwhile, Bob Barnetson examines how Kenney is planning to drive down wages while forcing workers into longer hours. And Aidan Harper discusses how a shorter work week could help to alleviate income inequality.

- Paul Krugman points out how Donald Trump's anti-regulation zealotry is needlessly putting people's lives at risk in the name of corporate profits.

- Jordan Health-Rawlings and Raizen Robin discuss the causes of continued hunger and poverty in Canada. And Tim Aubry, Geoffrey Nelson, Kevin Page and Claudette Bradshaw lament the lack of progress in reducing homelessness.

- Finally, Martin Patriquin comments on the anti-minority attitudes behind Quebec's ban on selected religious symbols. And Andrew Mitrovica rightly calls attention to Andrew Scheer's plan to court the far right as part of his path to power under an electoral system which rewards that course of action.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Andrew Mitrovica gives due credit to Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott for showing there's some honour to be found in Canadian politics - though the Libs' subsequent loyalty tests have made it all too clear how limited that is. And Alan Freeman warns of the unfairness of a two-tier justice system in which well-connected businesses never answer for their crimes.

- The Canadian Press reports on the Saskatchewan Party's continued disregard for treaty rights and the safety of Indigenous people when it sees an opportunity to pander to exclusionary voters.

- Meanwhile, Chris McGreal discusses the destruction and absorption of family farms by U.S. agribusinesses.

- Edward Keenan reports on the unexpected passage of Mike Layton's longstanding plan to make wastewater polluters pay as an example of the value of persistence in politics.

- Vanessa Branch highlights the many ways in which homeless people are excluded from their communities due to a lack of public resources to accompany the best efforts of civil society and volunteer groups.

- Finally, Brandie Weikle reports on a new survey showing a majority of Canadians to be unhappy with their current work income.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Matt Bruenig offers up a set of proposals to help American families toward economic security. And Andrew Jackson has some suggestions to boost Canada's middle class:

(T)op-line statistics suggest that ordinary middle-class households are seeing little or no increase in their incomes even as many, especially young people, sink deeper into debt. This helps explain the rise of the populist right which has targeted (largely imaginary) tax increases as the problem, and proposes tax cuts as the solution.
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What the Liberals have not done is improve public programs to significantly alleviate the cost burden on households through “in kind” benefits. A key example is Quebec’s child care program, which, according to a recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, costs parents of an infant in Montreal just $175 a month, compared with $1,685 a month in Toronto. Yet the federal government has only very modestly increased its support for provincial child care programs based on the Quebec model.

The Liberals seem set to reject a “big bang” national pharmacare plan which would widen access to needed drugs for the uninsured, remove the need for private insurance, and lower the cost of current employer plans for employers and workers. Instead, they seems to favour a drug benefit narrowly targeted to the working poor.

When it comes to the acute shortage of affordable housing in our big cities, the best single option is to invest in high-quality, mixed income, social and co-operative housing which increases non-market supply. Yet the real estate industry lobbying to allow new buyers to go even deeper into debt seems to be gathering steam as the answer to “affordability.” The new national housing policy is not very ambitious and is just getting off the ground.

The stagnation of middle-class living standards seems set to frame the pre-election political debate over issues of affordability. Progressives should be arguing that bold public programs to meet basic needs outside of the market are needed to targeted income supplements, and certainly far preferable to tax cuts, which would inevitably mean cuts to the services we already have.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Mitrovica discusses how Justin Trudeau has fallen prey to hubris even more quickly and blatantly than his Lib predecessors. But Paul Adams warns that it will be especially difficult for a limited media presence to meaningfully challenge leaders' spin in the course of Canada's impending election campaign.

- Dennis Gruending has some questions about the "convoy" propagandizing for unfettered oil development and against minorities.

- Finally, Bob Weber reports on the combination of inconsistent analysis and convenient omissions accepted in lieu of any meaningful environmental assessment of tar sands developments.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Trish Hennessy examines the aftermath of Ontario's provincial election, while Andrew Mitrovica traces the spread of Trumpian antisocial populism. And Doug Nesbitt offers some lessons for workers based on the province's previous PC government.

- David Roberts takes a look at our economic assumptions behind climate change policy, and notes that they're thoroughly distorted toward a lack of action.

- Linda McQuaig criticizes the Trudeau Libs for prioritizing the oil industry's profits ahead of the national interest. And Mitchell Anderson notes that the Canadian public is now one of the few actors foolish enough to spending large amounts of money trying to continue inflating a clearly-bursting oil bubble.

- Pam Palmater reminds us that Indigenous rights aren't subject to popular whims - even if public opinion still includes far too much baked-in racism. And Murray Mandryk comments on the Justice for our Stolen Children camp which is being evicted by the Saskatchewan Party in the name of  Canada Day festivities.

- Finally, Gary Mason is duly incredulous at the whining of multimillionaire Vancouver homeowners at the prospect of paying something closer to their fair share of the cost of a functioning community.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andre Picard notes that contrary to our self-image, Canada actually lags behind international peers in health and social spending. And PressProgress points out the same conclusion in new OECD research.

- Andrew Mitrovica writes that Doug Ford's ascendancy in Ontario politics suggests that Canada is catching the Trump virus - and not for the first time given his brother's history. And Jim Stanford highlights how Ford's planned austerity would affect the people who rely on strong public services:

The People’s Guarantee pledged to balance the provincial budget by 2020, and then run a small surplus. With no carbon tax, and no concrete plan for “efficiency” savings, how will Mr. Ford square that same circle?

Arithmetically, he has three options: increase taxes; tolerate a deficit; or cut spending. At door one, Mr. Ford could seek other sources of tax revenue. That’s a non-starter, given his rhetoric about long-suffering taxpayers. Door two is to tolerate deficits, converting lost carbon-tax revenue and the likely failure of the efficiency audit into higher debt. That also clashes painfully with Mr. Ford’s pledge to wrestle the debt to the ground.

Almost certainly, Mr. Ford will choose door number three: still-deeper cuts in provincial spending. He needs $10-billion in cuts over three years to offset carbon tax revenue; $6-billion more to meet the efficiency target; and still more to pay for any additional tax cut promises. All that’s on top of $1.9-billion in annual spending cuts from cancelling cap and trade. All told, he will need to cut spending by close to $25-billion over three years – and around $10-billion in the third year alone. Cuts of this magnitude would significantly damage government services (all the more so given continual inflation and population growth).

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Mr. Ford won the leadership by stoking populist resentment against government, taxes, sex-ed and environmentalism. That mobilized enough grassroots party support to put him over the top. Completing a similar journey from centrism to austerity in a provincial budget, however, will be much harder. And many Ontarians will pay a steep price for the trip.

- Meanwhile, Cindy Blackstock offers a reminder of the fundamental injustice of forcing Indigenous children to keep waiting for their basic public services to be incrementally brought up to par.

- Adam Gartrell discusses the Australian Council of Trade Unions' plan to ensure that casual workers have a predictable path to stable employment after six months. And Sean McElwee, Colin McAuliffe and Jon Green argue that a jobs guarantee (already backed by Kirsten Gillibrand) would make for both a highly desirable public policy step, and a political winner for U.S. Democrats.

- Finally, the National Post's database of political contributions across Canada looks to make for an essential resource in tracking the influence of money on our political choices.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Daniel Tencer reports on Pierre Kohler and Servaas Storm's study showing that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement figures to cost jobs and wages in Canada and across Europe. 

- Jim Tankersley explains the initial rise of the stock market since November's U.S. election, while offering reason to doubt that any boost will last. And Robert Reich points out that Donald Trump's actual plans are only likely to cause economic harm in the long run.

- Joseph Stiglitz writes that the only way to ride out Trump's stay in office will be to stay alert and resist.

- Molly Worthen tries to offer some places to find hope during Trump's tenure - though she conspicuously doesn't include any particular reason to include Canada on the list. And Andrew Mitrovica reminds us that we're far from free of bigoted demagogues, while Laurel Russwurm notes that Justin Trudeau has chosen to preserve an electoral system which favours them.

- Lauren Heuser makes a case for electoral reform based on the U.S.' cautionary tale as to the limitations of a duopoly. And Rick Smith points out that the Libs' refusal to work on a more fair electoral system in Canada seems to be based primarily on their desire to foment right-wing extremism to give them something to run against.

- Finally, Sonia Sodha examines the returns so far from Finland's experiment with a basic income.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Sam Gindin discusses the future of labour organizing in the course of reviewing Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Guilded Age:

(W)e have been struggling with how to combine building the union with raising larger, more political questions. One modest element of this, especially but not only in the public sector, is to confront the apparent constraint of fiscal budgets on what is possible and run educationals for workers on how to read budgets technically and how to understand them politically.

But the larger point is that even the best and most community-rooted unions cannot change the world by themselves and so are confined to the limits of operating under capitalism. Unions can educate about elite and local power but focusing their education on capitalism as a system rarely occurs. They can create organic leaders but not necessarily lead them to the next step of becoming organic socialist leaders. They can support political parties but do not ask what role workers and unions might have in transforming capital states to socialist states. Such things — all vital to dealing with working-class power — can only be tackled within or alongside an institution with a broader and longer-term perspective: a coherent socialist tendency or party.

- Andrew Mitrovica laments the spread of right-wing populism over the past year. And Keman Dervis warns about the dangers of corporate short-term thinking, while Frank Clemente points out the futility of relying on corporate handouts as a basis for economic development.

- But on the brighter side, Harry Leslie Smith offers a hopeful perspective that collective decency will win out over anti-social impulses in the end.

- Peter Goffin reports on the urgent need to make mental health supports available to Canadians without a price tag. And Trevor Young sets out a few suggestions from doctors to improve our current health care system.

- Finally, Idealistic Pragmatist makes a welcome (if brief) return to highlight the need to take people's public contributions seriously regardless of whether they need to use a pseudonym in offering them.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kevin Connor reports that the more Ontario voters are exposed to the realities of public-private partnerships, the more they're turning against the idea - with a quarter or less of respondents seeing any upside to handing public services over to businesses. Tony Keller writes that Canada's history of corrupt infrastructure projects designed to enrich government supporters goes back at least to the Pacific Scandal. And David Dayen highlights why there's every reason to be suspicious of Donald Trump's privatized infrastructure plan for the U.S.:

This report from Peter Navarro, set to be one of Trump’s leading economists, lays out the blueprint. The government would sell $1 trillion in revenue-producing bonds, needing only to supply an equity cushion to ensure everyone gets paid. Navarro estimates around $140 billion in government funding when all is said and done, which you could easily get through repatriation.

Investors would get a tax credit to entice them to buy bonds, and Navarro claims that the tax revenue from new jobs created by the projects makes up for that cost. He also wants to contract out these projects, building in a 10 percent profit margin for the private contractor. Navarro claims that construction costs are higher when built by the government, and the private sector is more efficient.

Does this sound familiar? It’s the common justification for privatization, and it’s been a disaster virtually everywhere it’s been tried. First of all, this specifically ties infrastructure—designed for the common good—to a grab for profits. Private operators will only undertake projects if they promise a revenue stream. You may end up with another bridge in New York City or another road in Los Angeles, which can be monetized. But someplace that actually needs infrastructure investment is more dicey without user fees.
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(T)he stock market may love this idea. But it’s designed to funnel money to big investors and contractors by essentially letting them purchase public assets. This could impoverish the people these projects are supposed to help, allow corporations to choose investment destinations, and further climate disasters. And given the likelihood of profit-gouging, there’s no guarantee it even has a net benefit for workers and communities over time.

- Richard Adams reports on the UK social mobility commission's conclusion that today's younger workers represent the first generation in recent memory facing worse income and career prospects than preceding ones. 

- Monika Dutt examines the evidence on two-tiered health care, and concludes that a for-profit stream only exacerbates the wait times and lack of resources in a public health care system.

- Finally, Kyle Curlew reminds us how Bill C-51 is designed to intrude on Canadians' rights. And Andrew Mitrovica points out that Canada's hands are far from clean when it comes to state spying on journalists trying to report in the public interest.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Karl Nerenberg examines new research from the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards showing how workers have seen hardly any benefit from four decades of productivity gains which have filled corporate coffers:

(I)n Canada, the productivity of labour -- the amount workers produce per unit of effort -- went up by over one per cent per year over the 38 years between 1976 and 2014.

The average worker's earnings, however, barely budged over that same period. The rise in wages was less than one tenth of one per cent per year. Put differently, the rise in productivity was more than ten times that of earnings.

We do not have comparable statistics for the U.S., but it would be a fair bet they are not that different.

The anecdotal evidence that a great many Americans are working harder, but getting nowhere economically, is abundant.
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Thr growth of globalization has "allowed capital to seek the highest returns globally and, at the same time, has brought workers in Canada's traded goods sector into competition with the workers of low-wage countries." In other words, trade deals do indeed benefit corporations, but they often also weaken workers' rights with a race to the bottom.

Robotics and computer technology, the study's authors note, have tended replaced people with machines, eliminating production-line work, "computation-intensive white-collar work" and other routine technical tasks that once provided good middle-income jobs. Technological change has also weakened the bargaining power of workers, leading to an increasingly part-time, über-ized world.

And one of the biggest institutional changes has been a sharp decline in the unionization of workers. That decline has been steady in Canada, but much steeper and more dramatic in the U.S.
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The CSLS points out that the unequal distribution of income growth is neither an inevitable nor irreparable fact of life. The Centre's economists argue that it is not too late for "policy to be used to adjust that distribution." And the fact that productivity is growing, the study's authors say, should make the task of devising new politics easier, not harder.

"It is easier," the study says, "To ensure that everyone receives a larger slice of the pie when the pie itself is growing."

But that hopeful conclusion comes with a big caveat. The forces that cause stagnating middle incomes are, the study tells us darkly, "unlikely to disappear in the near future."

- Bill Curry follows up on Justin Trudeau's plans to exacerbate the problem by treating infrastructure as a profit centre rather than a matter of public service. Maryse Zeidler discusses the predictable cost to Canadians of selling off airports. And the CP reports that Trudeau's plans include changing the law to hand even more concessions to outside capital.

- Laurie Penny writes that the corporate establishment treated as a foil by Donald Trump's campaign message in fact stands to be the only beneficiary of his election - and that an essential part of responding to Trump's presidency will be to make clear whose voices are actually being suppressed.

- Meanwhile, Tom Parkin highlights Niki Ashton's work to engage with the young workers who are seeing the worst from an economic system designed to extract more wealth for those who already have the most.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica points out that a lack of historical accountability makes it obvious why Canada's security establishment seems to figure it can act with impunity - and that it's long past time for illegal actions to carry real consequences.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andrew Jackson discusses the challenge of ensuring that stable jobs are available in Canada:

Good jobs are a central mechanism in the creation of shared prosperity.

What matters for workers is not just being able to find any job but also security of employment, level of pay, working conditions, and the opportunity to develop talents and capacities.

Unfortunately, as has been documented in many studies, the long-term trend in Canada has been towards a much more polarized jobs market in which there has been a disproportionate increase in low pay, precarious jobs, and a concentration of income growth among higher-paid professionals and managers, especially the top 1%.
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Many lower wage workers live in families with decent overall incomes, and income from wages is boosted by government programs such as child benefits and unemployment insurance. Still, the numbers show that a  significant minority of Canadians work in jobs which are insecure, and a surprisingly high proportion work in jobs which are low paid or very modestly paid. Indeed, the proportion of low paid workers in Canada, defined as earning less than two-thirds of the median wage, is, at 21.8%, the third highest in the industrialized world, according to the OECD.

Raising wages for lower-paid workers will require boosting minimum wages to at least $15 per hour and widening access to union representation, especially for workers in private sector sales and service jobs. These measures are critical to any realistic strategy to “grow the middle-class.”

- Anna Louie Sussman points out that stagnant wages even in the face of U.S. job growth can largely be traced to a lack of demand for additional labour. Richard Dobbs and Anu Madgavkar write about the UK's backsliding standard of living between generations. And Jim Stanford outlines a possible progressive response to the combination of stagnation and upward redistribution that's come to be treated as our economic norm.

- Andrew Mitrovica argues that a breakdown in trust arising out of the Iraq war paved the way to spread the politics of violence in the U.S. and the Middle East alike. Robert Reich emphasizes the need for Hillary Clinton to recognize the justified spread of anti-establishment sentiment while making the case against the bigoted form on offer from Donald Trump and the Republicans. And Doug Saunders reminds us that the most important problems facing the U.S. are wholly lacking from the Republicans' message.

- Steven Chase examines the connection between the arms industry and think tanks which are regularly put forward as commenters on military purchasing.

- Finally, Tom Parkin discusses how electoral reform can be expected to change the face of Canadian elections - and how a status quo which is easiest for party strategists isn't what's best for the public.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan points out the choice between a basic income and the provision of basic services, while making a strong case to focus on the latter:

At the federal level, the cost of raising everyone’s income above the poverty line is an estimated $30 billion a year. The Alternative Federal Budget shows we could permanently expand the stock of affordable housing, child care, and public transit; and almost eliminate user costs for pharmacare, dental care and post-secondary schooling for half the annual cost ($15 billion).

After a decade, we would have expanded access to more high-quality, affordable necessities of life, not just for the poor but for everyone.

A little more, and you could have free access to community and recreation centre programming, expanded mental health services, universal access to low-cost internet, and more legal aid. The net result: greater participation, greater mobility, greater potential, greater health.

Both a basic income and a basic service model put more money in people’s pockets, one with a cash transfer, one by offsetting the costs of necessities.

Basic income requires everyone to pay more to provide a small number of our most vulnerable neighbours more choice and more dignity. Basic service also requires we pay more, and also helps the most vulnerable, but benefits everyone by making incomes and markets matter less. It builds both potential and solidarity, and is a far easier sell in an era of slow growth.

Basic income talk has fired imaginations across the globe. Mr. Segal’s exercise offers a unique opportunity to test whether we’re better off when we have more income, or need less of it.

- Meanwhile, Susan Prentice, Linda White and Martha Friendly offer a useful outline to build a national child care system. And Bill Curry reports on this week's health care summit - though there's reason for concern in both the Libs' unwillingness to negotiate funding with the provinces, and their apparent inclination to eliminate universality in favour of means-testing. 

- And in case we needed a reminder as to the importance of shared knowledge of problems, Elizabeth Payne reports on how a week of management eating the meals previously served to patients at the Ottawa Hospital led to a revamping of the menu.

- Larry Elliott reports on the Institute for Fiscal Studies' report showing that the insecurity now facing middle-class families in the UK is comparable to the burden on households recognized as living in poverty a generation ago. But on the bright side, Jessica Elgot writes about Labour's plan for a national investment bank to both spur economic development, and give the public a greater stake in prosperity.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica points out why we should be skeptical of the security state's attempts to proclaim itself essential in the wake of attacks which it can never prevent.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Paul Willcocks discusses British Columbia's two-tiered education system and the role it plays in exacerbating inequality - which is well worth keeping in mind as Saskatchewan deals with the fallout from the Wall government's refusal to fund public schools. And Charlie Smith reviews Andrew MacLeod's A Better Place on Earth as an important contribution to understanding the reality of poverty and inequality in B.C.

- Meanwhile, David MacDonald highlights new Statistics Canada data showing how parental income tends to influence children's opportunities:

Previous estimates in Canada put our income transmission at 23%, but the new report pegs it at 32% . Put another way, a third of what you’ll make in your best years can already be predicted by what your parent made in their best years. That means that both advantage and disadvantage are passed down generationally from parent to child.

In Canada, our income transmission rate isn’t quite as bad as the US, where half of a person’s income is pre-determined by what their parent made. So, what does that mean for the rags-to-riches “American Dream?” Well, it’s actually a bit of an impossible dream. Of developed nations, the US is actually one of the countries where it’s least likely for children to move from abject poverty to millionaire’s row.
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If you look only at the intergenerational income transmission of rich parents to their kids, it’s far higher than the average, at 45%. This means that half of the keys to the top 1% club in Canada are passed from parent to child. Since this linkage is so strong, it also means that it’s much more difficult for someone whose parents were middle class (or low income) to work their way up into the top 1%.

- Noah Smith comments on the IMF's belated recognition that forced austerity is generally an obstacle to economic development, not a factor promoting it. And Tracy Brown Hamilton outlines the Netherlands' upcoming study of the effect of a number of basic income models.

- Alison writes about the first meeting of Canada's parliamentary committee on electoral reform - with particular emphasis on Nathan Cullen's work to encourage direct public participating in the proceedings, coupled with Jason Kenney's determination to stifle it.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica points out the mathematical certainty that the Libs' idea of oversight for Canada's surveillance state will be insufficient.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jared Bernstein is hopeful that the era of expansive corporate rights agreements is coming to an end. Paul Krugman notes that there's no evidence anybody has gained economically from the spread of those agreements other than the wealthy few pushing them through. And Stuart Trew has some suggestions for Canadians interested in having their say on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- Michelle Cheung reports that a longstanding lack of maintenance funding is resulting in the loss of desperately-needed social housing. And while Ontario's move to permit inclusionary zoning represents some progress, it's no substitute for maintaining the housing which should already be available.

- John Baglow discusses the double standard in tax treatment, as the Canada Revenue Agency has been sicced on charities and working people while leaving wealthy tax evaders alone.

- And Murray Brewster exposes how Canada's defence procurement structure encourages corporate abuses - with this looking like a particularly important point in response to the right-wing inclination to rely solely on outside knowledge:

One of the key findings was that the structure of the contracting regime “provides perverse incentives for industry to increase costs” – particularly in sole-source deals – and there is “limited expertise in government” to review industrial processes and validate the increases.

“Neither (procurement services) nor DND has a sufficient knowledge base of subject matter experts that understand the ‘Should-Cost’ of a project, nor does either have the ability to understand the production process or other technical matters which are important drivers of cost and risk,” said the study, which compared Canada’s system with Britain, Australia and the U.S.

- Finally, Laurel Collins rightly argues that the Libs should be repealing Bill C-51 immediately, rather than dragging their heels while an unnecessary surveillance state builds up. Andrew Mitrovica points out that even the few opportunities to ask questions about CSIS' activities are being wasted, leaving it to disrupt Canadians without accountability. And Thomas Walkom points out that Justin Trudeau has quietly agreed to even more unfettered information-sharing with the U.S.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Katie Hyslop contrasts Canada's longstanding recognition that housing is a human right against the gross lack of policy action to ensure its availability:

Canada has signed and ratified the 1976 United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and in Article 11 it does recognize "the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions."

"Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right," the next sentence of the covenant says.
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Canada has also ratified the UN's International Convention on Women's Rights, and had a hand in drafting the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Both of these also mention a right to housing, either as part of a right to "a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family," or on a basis of equity with men who enjoy a right to adequate housing.

"Essentially, Canada has committed on the international scene to respecting a right to adequate housing for every resident in Canada," said Margot Young, law professor at the University of British Columbia.
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Evidence that Canada is failing to deliver on that right is in our overcrowded shelters, tent cities, or sidewalk camps, where an estimated 235,000 people experience homelessness every year. By definition, it would seem, their right to housing as guaranteed by the covenants Canada has signed, is being denied. 
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The Canadian Homelessness Research Network estimated in a 2014 report that a comprehensive national housing strategy that included maintaining and expanding social and indigenous housing, as well as rental and home owner subsidies, could be implemented for about $4 billion a year -- twice what the federal government has been spending on social housing in recent years. Offsetting that, however, would be annual savings in emergency and social services that the Network estimated at $7 billion.

But the pay off would be more than financial, Larkin says. "One of my hopes would be that it would change the social structure of our cities," she says, "to accept that we should have diversity in all of our cities, that people who are not the richest of the rich should also be allowed to live in Vancouver, and that people should be able to age in place."

Meanwhile, Canadians may have a moral right to adequate housing enshrined in international covenants -- and our federal government has signed on in principle. But 40 years later, it's still not ready to put that principle into action. Getting it to do so, experts agree, will be a job for politics rather than the law.

- Meanwhile, Vineeth Sekharan examines the connection between adverse childhood experiences and later homelessness. And Denise Leduc documents how the Wall government's attacks on Saskatchewan corrections conditions are leading to dangerous results for inmates and their children.

- Art Eggleton makes the case for Canada to test - and ultimately implement - a basic income. 

- Tom Randall discusses how a major shift toward electric vehicles may be just a few years away - and would fundamentally reshape our current level of reliance on oil.

- Finally, Jim Bronskill reports on Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault's call for cabinet offices to be included in Canada's access to information legislation. And Andrew Mitrovica points to a recent hearing with CSIS and RCMP officials as a prime example of how we can't leave oversight of state action solely in the hands of MPs.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Richard Eskow summarizes the basic facts about inequality in the U.S. Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that it's impossible to fully explain or address that problem without factoring in ongoing racial disparities. And Sean Trembath writes about James Daschuk's work in tracing health disparities among indigenous peoples back to Canada's colonial policies, while Cheryl McKenzie reports on the challenges in combating poverty.

- Greg Kaplan and Giovanni Volante point out that income insecurity isn't limited to poor households, as plenty of higher-earning families effectively live paycheque to paycheque at best

- Mike De Souza discusses the connection between TransCanada's firing of whistleblowers and a pipeline explosion.

- Andrew Mitrovica asks why nobody is prepared to tell Canadians the truth about the unauthorized  disclosure of tax data to CSIS. And Tonda MacCharles reports that the Libs are being even more obstinate than the Cons in trying to deny compensation to people who were wrongly detained and tortured.

- Finally, Lana Payne rightly argues that we can't move on from revelations of systematic sexual harassment without first doing everything we can to eradicate it.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Duncan Brown discusses the connection between precarious work and low productivity. And Sara Mojtehedzadeh examines how Ontario's workers' compensation system is pushing injured individuals into grinding poverty by setting impossible requirements for claimants.

- Jim Balsillie worries that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will only increase the tendency of profits from Canadian ideas to flow elsewhere. And Cory Doctorow criticizes the Trudeau Libs for blindly following the Harper Cons when it comes to corporate control agreements.

- Stephanie Levitz reports on the Cons' cherry-picking of Christian refugees contrary to Canada's international obligations. And Fram Dinshaw exposes the Cons' willingness to keep pesticides in regular use long after they were known to be toxic.

- Nora Loreto discusses the state of Canada's media, including the need for both public and activist support for alternative news-gathering as corporate newspapers are slashed. And Thomas Frank points out the role of elite media in limiting political choices, particularly by presenting special treatment for the wealthy as an inevitability.

- Finally, Alison Crawford reports on CSIS' pattern of unauthorized intrusion into Canadians' tax information. Andrew Mitrovica situates that violation in the broader context of intelligence abuses, while Colin Freeze discusses how substantially more oversight could serve as at least a partial solution. And Cara Zwibel argues that it's time to put Charter rights at the forefront of how laws are made (which we can also extend to how government functions are carried out):

Clearly there are critical accountability and transparency gaps in our law-making process, which enable the advancement of arguably unconstitutional laws, such as Bill C-51. Indeed, at no point in the process are parliamentarians required to publicly defend the constitutionality of the laws they pass.

That job seems to have been left to our already overburdened courts, and to affected individuals and public interest organizations, such as CCLA, who, in recent years, have been compelled in some cases to launch Charter challenges as the only viable recourse. This is unfortunate given that these particular challenges — which come at a significant cost not only to the applicants, but also the public — could likely have been avoided had Parliament done its duty. And of even greater concern, as these lengthy court battles play out, the laws challenged remain on the books, restricting the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians, and risk becoming normalized.

Furthermore, the limited safeguards we do have are simply not working. Typically, the Department of Justice (DOJ) provides legal opinions to the justice minister regarding the constitutionality or legal vulnerabilities of government-proposed legislation. However, the government has refused to make these opinions public, stating that they are subject to solicitor-client privilege. The minister is also required to report Charter inconsistencies to Parliament, but the DOJ has suggested that the minister need only report when there is no credible argument in favour of a bill passing the Charter test. This standard is simply too low and, in practice, has meant that not a single report relaying concerns about Charter compliance has ever been made to Parliament.

Proactive accountability and transparency measures are sorely needed to help compel our government and parliamentarians — both present and future — to honour their fundamental duty to uphold the Charter throughout the law-making process. This is why CCLA has launched a new campaign called Charter First, which calls for the reform of our legislative process such that Charter rights are prioritized and Canadians are informed about the constitutionality of proposed bills.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Dani Rodrik discusses the evolution of work, and notes that future development and sharing of wealth may need to follow a different model than the one that's applied in the past:

(T)he post-industrial economy opened up a new chasm in the labor market, between those with stable, high-paid, and fulfilling services jobs and those with fleeting, low-paid, and unsatisfying jobs. Two factors determined the share of each type of job – and thus the extent of inequality produced by the post-industrial transition: the education and skill level of the workforce, and the degree of institutionalization of labor markets in services (in addition to manufacturing).

Inequality, exclusion, and duality became more marked in countries where skills were poorly distributed and many services approximated the textbook “ideal” of spot markets. The United States, where many workers are forced to hold multiple jobs in order to make an adequate living, remains the canonical example of this model.

The vast majority of workers still live in low- and middle-income countries and have yet to go through these transformations. There are two reasons to believe that their future path will (or need) not unfold in quite the same way.

...

(T)here is both good and bad news for the future of work in developing countries. Thanks to social policy and labor rights, workers can become full stakeholders in the economy much earlier in the process of development. At the same time, the traditional engine of economic development – industrialization – is likely to operate at much lower capacity. The resulting combination of high public expectations and low income-producing capacity will be a major challenge for developing economies everywhere.

- Erin Anderssen weighs in on the desperate need for an effective national child care system.

- Andrew Coyne makes the case for public financial disclosure to be carried out by an independent body, rather than being limited to whatever format, timing and spin best suits the government of the day. And the CP reports on the ugly aftermath of the Cons' end-of-term patronage binge.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica explains why we shouldn't expect the Libs to fix what's glaringly wrong with Bill C-51 - even if we have every reason to demand it:

(I)f Trudeau truly wanted to use simple, clear language to offer Canadians some long-overdue information about the fate of this ghastly law, all he had to do was add five words to the [throne] speech, bringing the total up to 1,755: The Government will repeal C-51. Why didn’t he?

If the Liberals intended to repeal C-51, they would have said so. If they’d intended to repeal large parts of the law, they would have sent some signals by now. If they haven’t, common sense suggests it’s because Trudeau has chosen to leave C-51 largely intact.
...
Terrorism cannot be bombed or legislated out of existence. Bill C-51 and laws like it offer the gullible only the illusion of security. And they do so at a terrible cost to free societies. C-51 includes extremely dangerous language criminalizing the “promotion” of terrorism and the spread of terrorist “propaganda” — legal catch-alls that can’t help but erode the right to free speech.

It vastly expands the power of security services to make arrests without warrants, on suspicion. It targets things like interference with “critical infrastructure” (code for protesters messing with pipelines), gives CSIS the power to “disrupt” suspected terrorist plots without waiting around for the cops, and allows it to petition a judge for permission to violate the Charter of Rights.

This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. The tired strategy of granting security services more powers in the immediate wake of the latest terrorist attack has been tried time and again, and has failed time and again.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Paul Krugman reviews Robert Reich's upcoming book, with a particular focus on the connection between corporate power and growing inequality:

...Reich makes a very good case that widening inequality largely reflects political decisions that could have gone in very different directions. The rise in market power reflects a turn away from antitrust laws that looks less and less justified by outcomes, and in some cases the rise in market power is the result of the raw exercise of political clout to prevent policies that would limit monopolies—for example, the sustained and successful campaign to prevent public provision of Internet access.

Similarly, when we look at the extraordinary incomes accruing to a few people in the financial sector, we need to realize that there are real questions about whether those incomes are “earned.” As Reich argues, there’s good reason to believe that high profits at some financial firms largely reflect insider trading that we’ve made a political decision not to regulate effectively. And we also need to realize that the growth of finance reflected political decisions that deregulated banking and failed to regulate newer financial activities.

Meanwhile, forms of market power that benefit large numbers of workers as opposed to small numbers of plutocrats have declined, again thanks in large part to political decisions. We tend to think of the drastic decline in unions as an inevitable consequence of technological change and globalization, but one need look no further than Canada to see that this isn’t true. Once upon a time, around a third of workers in both the US and Canada were union members; today, US unionization is down to 11 percent, while it’s still 27 percent north of the border. The difference was politics: US policy turned hostile toward unions in the 1980s, while Canadian policy didn’t follow suit. And the decline in unions seems to have major impacts beyond the direct effect on members’ wages: researchers at the International Monetary Fund have found a close association between falling unionization and a rising share of income going to the top one percent, suggesting that a strong union movement helps limit the forces causing high concentration of income at the top.

Following his schema, Reich argues that unions aren’t so much a source of market power as an example of “countervailing power” (a term he borrows from John Kenneth Galbraith) that limits the depredations of monopolists and others. If unions are not subject to restrictions, they may do so by collective bargaining not only for wages but for working conditions. In any case, the causes and consequences of union decline, like the causes and consequences of rising monopoly power, are a very good illustration of the role of politics in increasing inequality.

- Takashi Nakamichi reports that the Bank of Japan is going so far as to push unions to demand higher wages for the good of that country's economy as a whole. And Chico Harlan writes about the publicly-subsidized spread of low-wage work through the southern U.S. (and the limited opportunities it creates for workers), while Sara Mojtehedzadeh highlights the exploitation of cleaning workers through subcontracting arrangements in Ontario.

- Courtney Howard points out an open letter to the Trudeau Libs from Canadian physicians about the importance of the Paris climate conference and action against climate change. And that appeal would seem to fit with the Libs' talk about recognizing the social determinants of health as an element of their policy-making process.

- But of course, it remains to be seen whether they'll live up to that promise - and their installation of an oil executive in a prominent natural resources position doesn't exactly bode well.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica rightly slams any attempt to blame terrorism on people who value civil liberties. And Robert Benzie and Robert Cribb report on Ontario's long-overdue - and unanimous - push to limit how information in the hands of police can be misused for other purposes.