Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- George Lakey describes how Denmark has built the world's happiest society by building a political movement and an economic model centred around providing for everybody:

Using the crisis as an opportunity, the Social Democrats secured the foundation of the Nordic model, the most successful economic national model yet invented for the common good. The Danish majority loved it, and the unions and family farmers retained political control of the country for the rest of the century. The model became so hegemonic that all the parties were forced to embrace it to remain relevant at all, even the new “right-wing” party that hates immigration while still promoting a robust version of the Nordic model.

What shall we call that model? Describing Denmark as a “welfare state” is, I think, seriously misleading. The Nordic design isn’t welfare for the needy—that’s the old approach that has not worked for any nation in the world, ever. Instead, the Nordic model provides universal services given to all, whatever their income, as a matter or right, supported by progressive taxation that re-distributes income and wealth.
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The Danish people did not produce utopia, nor are they first in every measure. Norway has more social ownership of the means of production than Denmark does, and Sweden generates more innovation as measured by patents. The Danes did not end the push-back from the economic elite. Class struggle remains a reality in Denmark, as it does everywhere.

The Danes did, however, end centuries of domination by their 1 percent and empowered the democratic majority to make decisions about the future direction of the economy. They designed a different economy, one that centers labor instead of capital, correctly understanding this shift to be the pre-condition for the abolition of poverty. They also turn to nonviolent direct action to do the heavy lifting when they see it is needed, rather than putting all their eggs in the parliamentary basket.

- Meanwhile, Chris McGreal comments on the promise of democratic socialism as a needed hope for a growing movement of young Americans. Aditya Chakrabortty points out the deprivation and inequality that's leading to a first-ever strike among workers at UK McDonald's. And Rachelle Younglai discusses the Canadian workers who are being left without any hope of stable employment.

- Christopher Cheung interviews Geoff Dembicki about the trend of young voters making their decisions based on climate change - and the prospect that a cohort suckered once by the Trudeau Libs won't be fooled again.

- Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan call out climate change denialists when numerous ongoing disasters are demonstrating the human costs of inaction. And Rick Salutin criticizes much of the coverage of Hurricane Harvey as "rescue porn" which neglects needed analysis as to how damage happened and could be prevented.

- Finally, Alheli Picazo offers some suggestions in dealing with prejudice among people who are willing to listen and reconsider their assumptions.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- François Côté-Vaillancourt suggests a greater focus on redistributing wealth and income to ensure a secure standard of living, rather than seeking primarily to put people to work:

(I)nstead of fighting job losses, I would suggest that maybe the most important thing we could do would be to raise taxes on the rich. What does taxes have to do with unemployed workers? Well, in our example, the gain of producing slightly more tractors with less expenses is clearly not received by the 50 who have lost their jobs, nor the 150 workers left (the real income for most workers have stagnated over the last decades despite significant growth). Instead, it goes to the owners (whether a single person or multiple stock-holders). But here is the thing: the owners are not necessarily working longer than before, having better marketing strategies or more genius insights. They have simply been allowed to capture all the benefits from our society’s efficiency gains.

This is why taxes and redistribution are essential, and now more than ever. We must make sure that the owners still get a share of the efficiency gains, but the same goes for the workers who continue to work, and perhaps more importantly, we must make sure that those who are displaced from the workforce are not left with nothing for their sacrifice. For they are, in a very real way, sacrificing themselves for the benefit of the whole by no longer working.

Politicians on the right have long argued that redistribution toward the unemployed promotes laziness and weakens the country, but actually, more and more, our gains in efficiency in the industrial sector force people out of work in a way that has nothing to do with their will to work or their talents—and the same was true in past centuries in the farming sector. Full employment might not be a coherent goal after all. We probably should not have everybody producing goods and services on the market, since there is a point at which the consumers do not need 2 more tractors each, or a new phone every week. In other words, our efficiency is so great that it must now manifest as less work rather than evermore output. And thus, unemployment, if handled correctly, could be a good sign for all of us, rather than an indicator of economic, political and ethical failure.
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It is time to take the pulse of our times, and to fight for massive wealth redistribution and against the idea that anyone who does not work is lazy and undeserving. Right now, too many of us blind ourselves into blaming China or trade for unemployment in the industrial sector, thus demonizing an external enemy while chasing the mirage of full employment, without realising all the good our efficiency gains could mean for all of us if, and only if, wealth redistribution was keeping up with our economy.

- But Liz Alderman notes that Denmark is generating more jobs than it can fill while collecting a fair share of public revenue. And Chris Dillow examines the relative effects of neoliberal and social democratic policies, and finds that the latter have led to superior economic development.

- Meanwhile, Matt O'Brien highlights how the effects of austerity have been even worse than anticipated across Europe - including by increasing exactly the debt levels which were supposed to be reduced.

- The Star and the Globe and Mail each offer their support for a national pharmacare program (starting with a list of commonly-prescribed drugs).

- Finally, Tory Gillis reports on the impact of Regina's Housing First program - concluding that it has improved outcomes for the people able to participate, but fallen far short of reaching as many people as it should due to a lack of resources. And Liz Barney discusses a proposal in Hawaii to allow doctors to prescribe a home where homelessness is connected to medical conditions.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Miller weighs in on the high costs of austerity and the knowing deception of the right-wing politicians who pretend cuts don't have consequences:

It's a kind of political and economic law: these kinds of budget cuts always result in worse service. And there is a corollary: the conservative politicians who demand such cuts always refuse to accept responsibility for them, and pretend there is no connection between the actions they took and their direct repercussions.

They often get away with this because the consequences aren't immediately obvious to the general public, or only hit politically disempowered parts of the population. For example, in the 1980's and early 1990's, the TTC deferred maintenance as a way of coping with budget challenges. Deferred maintenance is another word for a cut. It's pernicious, because citizens can't easily see the cut and exercise their right to vote against it, yet it can have serious consequences. A tragic subway crash of 1995 in which three people were killed had a number of causes, the most critical of which was the failure of a fail-safe arm — a safety mechanism specifically designed to prevent an accident when a train misses a signal.  It didn't work, and if it had, the accident would not have occurred. Following the accident, a coroner’s inquest found “underfunding since the mid-1980s has contributed to the deterioration of the system and has jeopardized the safety of the TTC.”  As result, the transit commission changed its practices to make the maintenance of a state of good repair its highest spending priority.

The effect of these kind of hidden cuts is felt at all orders of government —  the Walkerton contaminated water disaster is a good example of provincial actions directly leading to a tragedy — but it is particularly challenging for cities because the vast majority of municipal spending is on actual day-to-day services...
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In all of these situations, the conservative politicians advocating the cuts use euphemisms like “efficiency” to pretend their policies are not going to affect people when they know, or ought to know, that isn't true.  In the case of Toronto, any experienced elected official knows that expenditure constraint has a direct impact on services.  Yet we still see politicians calling for the TTC to provide better service at the same time as giving directions calling for significant budget cuts.  They pretend the cuts won’t have an impact and hope that the public will not notice.  But slowly and eventually, they will. 

- Katie Hafner writes about the devastating impact of social isolation on seniors. And Jonathan Charlton reports that the Saskatchewan Party's health cuts are set to exacerbate the problem in Saskatoon among other negative effects on people. 

- Douglas Campbell and Lester Lusher examine the causes of growing inequality in the U.S. and find that it can be traced largely to upper-class tax slashing rather than trade.

- Luke Harding reports that Denmark has become the first country to buy leaked data from the Panama Papers in order to fully investigate tax evasion.

- Finally, Neil MacDonald writes that while the long-awaiting inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women will represent an important opportunity to examine systemic racism, it won't have the effect it should unless all of Canada pays attention.