Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ian Urquhart writes that while it's well and good to insist that the oil and gas industry stop attempting to greenwash its contribution to climate destruction, Canada also needs to reckon with its own unsupported claims to climate progress. Alienor Rougeot and Stephen Thomas discuss how Canada is falling behind the rest of the world in building clean energy capacity (while subsidizing continued fossil fuel emissions). And Marc Lee offers a reminder that British Columbia's carbon tax system is set up to favour polluting businesses over the public.  

- Gabriel Zucman writes that it's both feasible and necessary to make sure the rich pay their fair share. And Linda McQuaig calls out how the Fraser Institute and the Cons are teaming up to misrepresent how Canada's tax system works to ensure that never happens.  

- Gaby Hinsliff discusses how shrunken public services only end up imposing ever-more-unmanageable burdens on people to provide health and social care for relatives and loved ones. 

- Finally, Cory Doctorow points out that when private equity sets out to extract wealth from an existing business, its marks include the people who invest their money based on the false promise that there's any plan to operate more efficiently (or at all) in the long term. Danyaal Raza and Karen Palmer write about the particular dangers of letting private equity take over health care services. And Audrey Guay highlights just a few examples of how privatization has undermined the public health care system while doing nothing to sustainably reduce waiting lists. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Christopher Nardi reports on Liam Iliffe's unwitting revelations about how fossil fuel companies regularly thumb their noses at lobbying requirements and other rules while pulling the strings of compliant Canadian governments. Amanda Follett Hosgood discusses the growing push to ban at least blatantly false greenwashing, while John Woodside notes that it's telling that only the oil and gas sector is screaming bloody murder over a standard of accuracy which would apply to all kinds of business.  And Genevieve Guenther examines the new language of climate denial (which will sound painfully familiar in the Canadian political context). 

- Eric Ralls reports on a new study finding that air pollution is responsible for a nine-figure death toll since 1980, while Joao Medeiros laments the reality that such an ubiquitous killer is barely even recognized. And point out that the damage from forest fires includes multiple harms to lakes and waterways.

- Simon Wren-Lewis discusses the importance of highlighting how right-wing attacks on public revenue are the cause of the crisis in public services - and the reality that more and fairer taxes are a must to build the public institutions people want and need. And Kim Siever points out that strong public-sector jobs are good for the economy - meaning that the perpetual right-wing drive to make them privatized or precarious is all about waging class warfare against workers. 

- Finally, Gabriel Zucman offers a proposal (PDF) for a coordinated wealth tax to ensure the global ultra-rich can't evade any responsibility to the social sources of their profits. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Damian Carrington reports on the consensus among climate scientists that the fallout from the climate crisis looks to include at least 2.5 degrees of global warming. And Jason Hickel comments on the gap in impacts between the wealthy few who are responsible for most carbon pollution, and the less wealthy people who are facing its worst effects. 

- Lucas Chancel reviews Ingrid Robeyns' Limitarianism as providing a useful framework as to the necessary limits on the accumulation of wealth. And Gabriel Zucman rightly argues that at the very least, the need to properly tax wealth and excess income is conclusively established by the fact that U.S. billionaires are now paying a lower effective tax rate than the working class. 

- Meanwhile, Ashley Burke, Kate McKenna and Andrew Ryan report on the glaring contradiction between Pierre Poilievre's message criticizing lobbyists as a matter of political positioning, and his eagerness to have them assemble wealthy donors to funnel money toward him. 

- Andre Picard calls out the Ford PCs for devoting their energy to suppressing damning evidence of the crisis in health care, rather than making any effort to ameliorate it. 

- Finally, Rani Molla examines the lengths car makers have gone to in making it impossible for consumers to protect their privacy while using a new vehicle. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Brian Owens' roundup includes reference to new research showing that excess deaths are the result of COVID-19 itself, not the lockdowns used to combat it. And Renju Jose and Byron Kaye report on Australia's soaring COVID rates, while Yasmine Ghania discusses how Saskatchewan is at risk of a fourth wave. 

- Angus Reid has unveiled new polling on vaccinations and other public health measures - including strong support for at least some form of vaccine requirement in every province/region. Blake Murdoch highlights how there are few rational arguments against vaccine passports. And Andrew Coyne writes that we may soon have little choice but to apply vaccine mandates to ensure we reach herd immunity before the Delta variant runs rampant. 

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the close connection between workplace COVID outbreaks and the use of temporary and precarious labour. 

- PressProgress exposes how Doug Ford's government has actively treated the pandemic as an opportunity for private actors to extract money from the public education system. And Mike Crawley reports on Ford's immediate end to the enforcement of licensing requirements for workers in skilled trades - signaling that for all the talking points conservatives spout about respect for tradespeople, they're the ones who wrongly believe there's no need for tradespeople to have any skills or qualifications. 

- Finally, Gabriel Zucman and others warn (PDF) that a loophole in the current international joint statement on a global minimum corporate tax may not only render the minimum ineffective, but could actually create new incentives for tax havens and the businesses who seek to abuse them.  

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Emmanuez Saez and Gabriel Zucman call for (PDF) governments to act as buyers of last resort to minimize the economic fallout from the coronavirus. Andrew Jackson offers his take on the appropriate public policy response to ensure that workers' incomes aren't decimated at the worst possible time, while David Macdonald points out how different types of workers stand to be affected in radically different ways. And Sara Mojtehezadeh reports on the plight of lower-income workers who lack paid sick leave.

- Anne Appelbaum discusses how the spread of the coronavirus challenges some of the U.S.' most fervently-held beliefs about itself. Robert Reich laments the destruction of the U.S.' public health system just as it's needed most. And Max Fisher and Emma Bubola point out how the crisis will both affect people differently based on existing inequality, and exacerbate that inequality.

- Andre Picard is hopeful that social solidarity will see us through. But the Globe and Mail's editorial board writes that we'll need to do everything we can to stop the spread of the virus - not delay in the hope that anything will resolve itself.

- Finally, Jenna Moon examines the many occasions risking the transmission of the coronavirus in the course of a single morning commute. And Ambrose Evans-Pritchard takes note of the obvious dangers to health care workers.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Asher Schecter interviews Emmanuel Saez about the realities of growing inequality - and the denialists looking to exacerbate it. And Chris Hayes talks to Gabriel Zucman about the benefits of a wealth tax.

- Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a new study showing how Canada could eradicate poverty with a basic income. And Alison McIntosh and Rebecca Graff McRae examine what a basic income could mean for Alberta.

- Meanwhile, Steven Greenhouse and Sharon Block each discuss a new study calling for a boost to the bargaining power of American workers, with an emphasis on sectoral bargaining which eliminate the race to the bottom between employers. And Jim Stanford writes that we shouldn't attribute to technology what's actually the result of choices in defining the power relationship between employers and workers:

Technology is neither our friend nor our enemy as the world of work changes. And workers face far more urgent problems than being made redundant by automation. Today they confront pervasive precarity, stagnant and unequal incomes, and an absence of voice in their work lives. These challenges cannot be fixed either by the automatic working of market forces or by the advances of digital technology. Instead, they demand quick and powerful responses from policy-makers and other labour market stakeholders.

By focusing on the demand side of the labour market, not just the supply of skilled workers, we can ensure there are fulfilling, productive jobs for future well-trained graduates to fill. By giving workers more protection and more say over technology and how it is managed (rather than leaving those decisions solely up to employers), we can attain a better balance between the goals of profitability and the goals of decent, secure work. By building more representative and participatory structures and processes to address both existing and future workplace challenges, we enhance our collective capacity to manage technological change more successfully and fairly.

- Zaid Noorsumar discusses how profit motives are distorting Ontario's home care system. And the Canadian Labour Congress is pushing for the new minority Parliament to finally implement a national pharmacare system to ensure cost isn't a barrier to the medication people need.

- Finally, Benjamin Perrin declares his recognition that supervised consumption sites are needed as a matter of basic compassion.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz, Todd Tucker and Gabriel Zucman write about the need for governments to bring in sufficient revenue to act in the public interest. And Sophie Alexander points out some of the millionaires who want their class to contribute their fair share.

- Robinson Meyer offers some historical perspective on both the climate breakdown we're already facing, and the continued carbon pollution which only figures to make matters worse. Mitchell Anderson comments on the futility of the Australian government's helicoptering of temporary food supplies to wallabies while it remains determined to destroy their habitat. And Emma McIntosh writes that both global economic forces and public opinion are on the side of a transition away from fossil fuels.

- Meanwhile, John Vidal writes that the solution to our excess of plastic waste involves planning to avoid creating it in the first place, not relying on recycling after the fact.

- Josh Rubin reports on the wage stagnation facing men living in Toronto over the past two decades. And the Economist weighs in on the connection between minimum wage levels and suicide rates.

- Finally, David Climenhaga takes note of the general strikes in France to save pensions under attack by Emmanuel Macron - as well as the media blackout against that type of collective action in Canada.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading...

- Thomas Torslov, Ludvig Wier and Gabriel Zucman examine the shifting of corporate profits to tax havens - and the false promise that corporate tax cuts will serve any purpose other than to undermine the collection of needed revenue by countries with real economies. And Liz Alderman notes that Portugal's rejection of austerity has led to better economic and social results than the alternative of cuts and suffering.

- Tom Saler writes about new archaeological research tracing inequality dating back thousands of years - and finding it to be a matter of choice rather than inevitability. And Meagan Day points out that inequality (particularly at the very top) continues to get worse by the year.

- Alex Finnis reports on the UK's largest jump in poverty since Margaret Thatcher was in power. Thiemo Fezter studies (PDF) the role the UK Cons' austerity played in fomenting support for the far-right UKIP as well as the disastrous Brexit vote. And Polly Toynbee writes about the added demands being placed on the UK's citizenry to plan for their government's irresponsibility out of already-limited resources:

Eight years of austerity has only cut debt by shifting a financial deficit on to a social deficit everywhere else. Philip Hammond, the chancellor and austerian-in-chief, has said taxes must rise to pay for the NHS, but he will return to his autumn budget besieged by needs in every threadbare service. Austerity was not accompanied by telling the public to expect less of everything for ever.
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 or now, the Brexit crisis distracts from all its other failures. When the former attorney general Dominic Grieve tells Sky News that no deal will cast us into “a state of emergency – basic services we take for granted might not be available”, Cassandra-like, he is ignored as Project Fear mark two. But when Doug Gurr, the head of Amazon UK – no political player – warns of “civil unrest” within two weeks of a no-deal guillotine, we should all sit up and pay attention. He said that to Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, at a meeting with business chiefs last Friday: Amazon is making contingency plans.

Everyone will take fright at the government’s own warnings to businesses and households. John Manzoni, the head of the civil service, told MPs last week that a no-deal break would be “almost unimaginable”, and have “horrendous consequences”. Already the government warns that the M26 in Kent will be a “holding area” for 1,400 trucks to ease gridlock as 10,000 lorries a day are potentially delayed by new EU customs checks. Mazoni warns of the need to stockpile food and medicines: “We have to put contingencies in place.” Stockpiling food – that’s an order to panic! And why not – half our food is imported, of which 80% comes from Europe via Dover.
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Conspiracy theorists claim a “deep state” really controls this country, a civil service and a dark establishment that prevent any radical change. That theory is now being tested to destruction. This has been the worst session of parliament in recent memory: the next may be worse. There is no deep state – nothing out there to save us from self-inflicted disaster. Only we can save us from ourselves.

- Samira Shackle discusses the value of viewing crime primarily as a condition to be treated, rather than an excuse to inflict punishment.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron makes the case for a national public bus service to more than fill the void left by Greyhound's disappearance.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Gabriel Zucman discusses how the wealthy currently avoid paying their fair share of taxes - and how to stop them by properly attributing income and ensuring registers of wealth. And Micah White is optimistic that the public response to the Paradise Papers may be to develop lasting solutions, rather than merely expressing momentary outrage.

- Andre Picard calls for data-driven decision-making on health care, while noting that plenty of important information isn't yet being properly tracked.

- Brittany Andrew-Amofah highlights three key areas where the Libs' immigration plans are in glaring need of improvement. And in a prime example of how Justin Trudeau's party is falling far short of its supposedly inclusive brand, Daniel Leblanc reports on the split developing within the federal Libs when it comes to Quebec's anti-Muslim Bill 62.

- Meanwhile, Brent Patterson calls out the Libs' broken promise of transparency on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other corporate-friendly trade deals.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk writes that Bronwyn Eyre's ignorance of Saskatchewan's history - including the relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples - renders her utterly unfit to be education minister. And Liz James documents just how wrong Eyre is about the curriculum under her ministerial portfolio.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ben Steverman examines the unfairness of the U.S.' tax system - which, like Canada's, offers gratuitous giveaways to wealthy investors which force workers to pay more:

Politicians have intentionally set tax rates on wages much higher than those on long-term investment returns. The U.S. has a progressive tax system in the sense that well-paid workers sacrifice much more than poor workers on their “ordinary income.” But Americans with so-called unearned income—qualified dividends and long-term capital gains—get a break. A billionaire investor can pay about the same marginal rate as a $40,000-a-year worker, a fact Warren Buffett has famously lamented.
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There’s a big flaw, though, in the argument that lower taxes on the rich stimulate longer-term investment, and thus jobs, famously labeled as “trickle-down economics.” While tax rates might affect the timing of some investor decisions in the medium term, it’s much harder to see how they affect long-term behavior. No matter the tax rate, investors ultimately look for opportunities to get richer.

“There is little empirical evidence showing that taxing investors less stimulates savings and growth,” said Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Supply-side economists disagree, and can point to tax cuts in the 1980s that seemed to spur the U.S. and U.K. economies. But there’s little evidence of a relationship between economic growth and investment taxes over the long term.

- Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman connect (PDF) the wealth hidden away in tax havens to its national sources - and then to develop a more accurate estimate of top-end wealth which has been siphoned off. And the Equality Trust offers a set of policy proposals for Labour to reduce inequality in the UK - with both regional imbalances and social ownership among the key economic priorities.

- Meanwhile, Brent Patterson examines how the oil industry - with the assistance of Lib insiders - is trying to limit public regulation of pipelines through NAFTA.

- Kevin Quigley notes that while a trial of the conductor involved in the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion will offer some testing of the causes of the disaster, more important systemic issues are going unaddressed in the absence of a broader inquiry.

- Finally, Don Pittis examines the social benefits of post-secondary education which are being lost in an effort to extract money from students. And Erika Shaker points out that Statistics Canada is making it more difficult to compare tuition across provinces.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Simon Kennedy highlights another key finding in Oxfam's latest study on wealth, as the global 1% now owns as much as the other 99% combined. And Dennis Howlett reviews Gabriel Zucman's Hidden Wealth of Nations, while noting that like the works it seeks to update it may fall short of measuring how much is being hidden from tax authorities:

Zucman  dissects several failed attempts to reign in tax havens including the G20/OECD on-demand exchange of information, the American Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA) (link is external)legislation and the European Union’s Savings Tax Directive. He estimates that globally about 8% of households’ financial wealth is held in tax havens. That works out to be about $7.6 trillion dollars or about $200 billion a year in lost revenue. He arrives at these numbers by comparing the national balance sheets to identify the difference between the assets and liabilities between nations. This seems like an elegant and simple solution to estimating what is hidden in tax havens.  But Zucman admits that this estimate “excludes a certain amount of wealth.”

James Henry, in a more detailed study, The Price of Offshore Revisited (link is external), done for the Tax Justice Network in 2012, estimates that the figure is closer to $21 to $32 trillion. Henry says Zucman vastly underestimates the role of developing countries and kleptocracy. He also notes the ommission of  offshore currency hoards, estimated at  $1.8 trillion. Henry also claims Zucman ignores estimates of private bank Assets Under Management -- now at least $13 trillion. Finally, Henry points out that Zucman ignores offshore nonfinancial assets like real estate, gold, precious metals, art, and ships, which is worth at least $10 trillion.

Henry plans to update his study which will likely show even more wealth going to tax havens. Zucman also acknowledges that his figure does not include corporate tax avoidance, which is often done legally, taking advantage of all the loopholes and weak tax laws that allow them to do this. Zucman does estimate that corporations are depriving governments of a third of corporate tax revenues by employing tax haven based subsidiaries to shift profits and lower their tax bill.

- Jessica Toale writes that the need for sustainable and broadly-shared economic development is just as obvious in the UK as in the countries normally associated with development goals.

- Deirdre Fulton notes that the U.S.' TTIP trade deal with Europe is rightly coming under fire for prioritizing the wealthy few over everybody else. And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines the findings of a new study showing that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will actually destroy jobs in Canada, while doing more to shift money from the bottom to the top than to boost economic growth.

- Max Stanfield discusses how postal banking would provide needed services in underserved communities while reducing reliance on predatory payday lenders.

- Finally, Ryan Meili offers a preview of what could be accomplished at this week's health minister summit. And Austin Frakt points out that even discussion about the unfairness of drug costs may be enough to reduce prices - though of course any resulting policy figures to be important to preserve the gains.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rick Salutin discusses how corruption has become endemic in the global economy as an inevitable consequence of me-first values:

You wouldn't have those CEO pig-outs absent neo-liberalism's moral model: get rich not just quick but hugely. As Kevin O'Leary loves saying, and CBC plasters on its promos: God put us here to get rich. Note it's a public broadcaster where he barks that and no one contests it. (I consider Amanda Lang's ripostes pro forma.)

Since there's no counter model (excluding, maybe, the pope) it becomes almost embarrassing not to grab for all you can get, legality be damned. The mentality seeps into areas like pro sports and the World Cup, with PED corruption, game fixing -- and trickles down to kids. There's also a sort of pre-emptive political corruption, where leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have their eye on the vast returns available after they leave office, through their own foundations, etc., as long as they don't offend the corporate titans who are the donors. But none of it would thrive without the grotesque, tantalizing wealth inequalities that equate with neoliberalism.

Why anyone thought privatizing huge chunks of public wealth and letting the profit motive slither all over them would mean less corruption evades me, along with thinking Ontario's Liberals are the beginning and end of the problem. Corruption may always be with us but it comes in different forms. We're currently driving the globalization-privatization model right off a cliff.

- Meanwhile, Jacques Leslie takes note of Gabriel Zucman's work on the widespread abuse of tax havens. And in a sign of just how thoroughly the service-to-the-rich is becoming entrenched, CBC reports on the latest WikiLeaks revelations - showing Canada among a group of countries negotiating an agreement to prevent governments from reining in financial-sector abuses.

- In case there was any doubt that fair tax increases can form part of a viable electoral strategy, Linda McQuaig argues that Ontario's recent experience - featuring both high-income surtaxes implemented in a minority provincial Parliament, and a decisive election defeat for the party insisting on cuts all around - should put that to rest.

- Stephen Maher reports on impending legal challenges to the Unfair Elections Act. But Leslie MacKinnon reminds us that the Cons will doggedly fight voting rights in any form and in the most intrusive way possible - most recently by waiting until four by-elections were in full swing before seeking a stay of a ruling extending voting rights to Canadians living abroad.

- James Hutt writes about the dangers of increasingly privatized health care. And Iglika Ivanova responds to some anti-teacher spin from B.C.'s Liberal government by pointing out that teachers - like most public servants - have been receiving far less than their fair share from economic growth.

- Finally, Wade Rowland makes the case that a stronger CBC would do wonders for all kinds of broadcasters in Canada.