Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Gerald Caplan writes about the existential threats to humanity which are being either escalated or ignored:

We are rapidly approaching the same kind of escalation that led the world to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, with humankind on the very brink of nuclear war and nuclear destruction. I still recall it quite vividly. It was a uniquely terrifying moment in the lifetime of the world. Like everyone else, I too kept a sharp eye out for the very latest news to see how long we had left to exist.

If it sounds preposterously melodramatic now, it was real enough then. In the end, we were saved by both sides agreeing to back off. But it took the cool heads of the two most powerful men on earth, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, to spare us to try again one day.

Has that day now arrived? Surely no one would willingly entrust Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump with the future of humanity, yet neither seems controllable in the slightest. Who knows where their bizarre game of chicken may end up? It's perfectly plausible that one or another may stumble his way into launching the armed missile that would demand immediate retaliation by the other. The consequences, as we all knew back in the Cold War days, would indeed be mutual assured destruction. Who believes Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump can be trusted to choose sanity over nuclear Armageddon?

In any event, there are other roads to doom. For a start: the updating of nuclear weapons, climate wilding and Mr. Trump's America spinning out of control. Take the third: there's no reason to believe that this summer's outbreak of violent anarchy in Charlottesville, Virginia, will be the last. Countless Americans are ready to erupt. It's estimated that hundreds of heavily armed neo-fascist militias threaten to unleash their power, knowing they have an ally in the White House. Both furious African-Americans and frustrated whites have had enough. America feels ripe for its second civil war, which, like the first, would unleash forces that can hardly be imagined. How can any normal sensible person fail to be shaken? I include me.

Frankly, these feel to me like the apocalyptic End Times that the hysterical Old Testament prophets foresaw many millenniums ago. As Mr. Trump has provocatively warned, "fire and fury" are next. Perhaps my dear old Mama understood human nature better than Professor Steven Pinker.

- Paul Buchheit discusses how inequality in particular is reaching levels which are resulting in the wealthiest few being almost entirely detached from everybody else. David Dayen reminds us that the largest private fortunes in the world are largely the product of capturing public investments. And Christopher Ingraham notes that matters are only projected to get worse absent a major change in course. 

- Meghan McCabe reports on the plight of Sears employees who have seen their promised pensions disappear due to corporate raiding.

- Finally, Andray Domise highlights Harper Senate appointee Lynn Beyak as an example of how bigotry is passed between generations even in the face of social progress.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Christopher Ingraham points out that while many luxuries are getting cheaper with time, the necessities of life are becoming much more difficult to afford:

Many manufactured goods — like TVs and appliances — come from overseas, where labor costs are cheaper. “International, global competition lowers prices directly from lower-cost imported goods, and indirectly by forcing U.S. manufacturers to behave more competitively, with lower prices, higher quality, better service, et cetera,” Perry said.

On the flip side, things like education and medical care can’t be produced in a factory, so those pressures do not apply. Compounding it, many Americans are insulated from the full costs of these services. Private and public insurance companies pay most medical costs, so there tends to be little incentive for individuals to shop around for cheaper medical care.

In the case of higher education, the nation’s massive student loan industry bears much of the upfront burden of rising prices. To the typical 18-year-old, a $120,000 tuition bill may seem like an abstraction when you don’t have to start paying it off until your mid-20s or later. As a result, the nation’s college students and graduates now collectively owe upward of $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.

“Prices rise when [health care and college] markets are not competitive and not exposed to global competition,” Perry said, “and prices rise when easy credit is available.”

Hence, our current predicament. We can afford the things we don’t need, but we need the things we can’t afford.

- Alex Usher notes how one of the same cost pressures applies in Canada, as universities losing public funding are squeezing students for massive tuition increases. And Lindsay Kines reports that the Clark government's decision to make life less affordable for people with disabilities in British Columbia has led to 3,500 people giving up their transit passes.

- Natalia Khosla and Sean McElwee discuss the difficulty in addressing racism when many people live in denial of their continued privilege.

- Paul Wells comments on SNC Lavalin's long track record of illegal corporate donations to the Libs and the Cons.

- Finally, Gerry Caplan points out how Justin Trudeau is dodging key human rights questions. And Mike Blanchfield reports that the Libs' willingness to undermine a treaty prohibiting the use of cluster bombs represents just another area where they're leaving the Cons' most harmful policies untouched.

#YEG2016 Followup Links

While there's been plenty of ill-informed commentary since the NDP's convention last weekend, I'll take a moment to highlight a few of the followup points which deserve a read.

- Joshua Keep rightly recognizes the new leadership election as an opportunity for renewal, but no guarantee of improvement. Gerard Di Trolio focuses particularly on the prospects of an unabashedly left-wing leadership campaign. And Selina Chignall offers a look at what the NDP may be looking for in its next leader, while Samantha Power examines some of the competing forces within the party (though we shouldn't overstate the differences, particularly given that there was little apparent problem keeping all sides of any of the issues in the fold just an election cycle earlier).

- Gerald Caplan asks the question of whether the NDP's main problem has to do with its ability to be seen as a viable government. But I'd note in response that at least over the last two elections, the issue has been one of winning first-choice support rather than being in the consideration set of enough voters to contend for power.

- Nicholas Ellan offers a look at some of the tactics which worked for the Leap and Renewal movements at the NDP's convention - while discussing how they should inform the party's own work in the time to come. 

- Finally, Crawford Kilian points out that the most extreme response to the Leap Manifesto resolution amounts to an attempt to deny the glaringly obvious. And lest anybody think the issue is at all new based on the development of the Leap Manifesto itself, see my earlier discussion in this post and column.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Dayen examines the different treatment granted by businesses to well-connected elites compared to everybody else, and says it's understandable that voters are looking for leaders who understand their side of the divide. And Robert Reich highlights the dangers of trying to appeal for votes by telling people nothing they do will lead to meaningful political change.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman examines how the Republicans - like Canada's Cons - have deliberately trapped themselves in a time loop which will accept no new evidence or developments.

- Tom Jacobs writes about the connection between inequality, obesity and poor health - as childhood deprivation tends to lead to increased food consumption when it's possible later on.

- Paul Mason offers three questions we need to answer in order to meaningfully address a lack of affordable housing.

- Martin Regg Cohn answers the misplaced spin that an increase in public pensions is anything but an economic boon - as it ultimately helps both present-day investment and long-term income security.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan provides a few suggestions to restore some semblance of civility and functionality in Parliament.

[Edit: fixed link.]

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Lana Payne highlights how Kevin O'Leary's obliviousness to inequality makes him a relic. But Linda McQuaig notes that however distant O'Leary may be from the public, he's not that far removed from all too many Conservatives.

- Gerald Caplan points out that even a campaign where the Cons managed to earn the committed disapproval of up to 70% of the country doesn't seem to have led anybody to learn any lessons. And Michael Harris reacts to the Cons' sudden attempt to deny the existence of the record they were so desperately defending just months ago.

- Emily Badger responds to the poisoning of Flint by asking whether the U.S. would have accepted similar damage to more privileged segments of the population. And Rachel Browne observes that this weekend's shootings represented just the latest tragedy for La Loche - if the first to receive sustained outside attention.

- Al Jazeera reports on the alarming - and continuing - buildup of plastic waste which stands to outweigh all the fish in our oceans within a few decades.

- Finally, Marvin Shaffer is the latest to discuss why revenue-neutral carbon taxes only ensure that we don't take steps to mitigate the long-term damage done to our planet:

While we are already experiencing some impacts and costs of climate change, the most extensive and significant costs will be borne by future generations. So if we are going to pay a tax in recognition of the costs we are imposing on future generations, those payments shouldn’t be returned to us in the form of income or sales tax breaks.

Any reasonable notion of equity would demand that carbon tax revenues be directed to measures that benefit those who will be bearing the costs of what we do. They should be dedicated to measures that will help offset the emissions we are generating, prepare for and mitigate the climate change impacts we know we are causing, and support the research that ultimately will be needed to reduce the impacts and costs of what in all likelihood will be increasing concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere far beyond what our targets call for.

There are legitimate concerns about the inefficient use of earmarked funds. But that calls for vigilance in the manner in which funds are invested so that we do the best we can for the future generations. It doesn’t support the redirection of funds to the present generation at the expense of those who will bear the costs of what we do.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tavia Grant is the latest to note that the potential for driverless vehicles necessitates some consideration as to how to account for people who currently rely on driving jobs. And Vivek Wadhwa makes the case for a new form of capitalism which isn't designed to leave people behind:

Countries such as India and Peru and all of Africa will see the same benefits — for at least two or three decades, until the infrastructure has been built and necessities of the populations have been met.

Then there will not be enough work even there to employ the masses.

Slim’s solution to this is to institute a three-day workweek so that everyone can find employment and earn the money necessary for leisure and entertainment. This is not a bad idea. In the future we are heading into, the cost of basic necessities, energy, and even luxury goods such as electronics will fall low enough to seem almost free — just as cell-phone minutes and information cost practically nothing now. It is a matter of sharing the few jobs that will exist in an equitable way.

The concept of a universal basic income is also gaining popularity worldwide as it becomes increasingly apparent that declining costs and the elimination of bureaucracies, make it possible for governments to provide citizens with income enough for the basic necessities. The idea is to give everyone a stipend covering living costs and to get government out of the business of selecting what social benefits people should have. The advantage of this approach is that workers gain the freedom to decide how much to work and under what conditions. Enabling individual initiative in the work that people pursue, in fields ranging from philosophy and the arts to pure science and invention, will result in their enrichment of their cultures in ways we can’t foresee.

- Meanwhile, Jordan Weismann slams the right's attempt to invent a "success sequence" which conveniently leaves out the economic security necessary for people to be able to plan out their lives.

- Paul Krugman discusses how the past cost-based justification for slashing social programs has been thoroughly undermined in the U.S. - though of course the memo has been conspicuously shredded by Republican presidential candidates. And Arkadi Gerney, Anna Chu and Brendan Duke highlight how the U.S.' middle class is increasingly getting squeezed out.

- Laurent Bastien Corbeil reports on the RCMP's use of deceptive social media accounts to infiltrate and monitor activists, while Clare Wahlen reports on revelations that CSIS operates dozens more foreign stations that previous acknowledged. And Stephen Castle discusses how the UK's absurd secrecy surrounding security issues has resulted in the media being unable to report anything about the trial of an individual who's since been acquitted.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan writes that the ballot question this fall should centre on Stephen Harper's abuse of the trust of Canadian voters.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jeffrey Sachs writes about the need to shape a more moral, less exploitative economy. So needless to say, the Cons are instead working on promoting corruption.

- Mark Weisbrot discusses how the Troika's attempt to impose continued austerity on Greece in the face of public resistance can't be seen as much more than an attempt at coercive regime change. And John Nichols reports on just a few of the voices rightly lauding the refusal of Greece's electorate to go along with that plan.

- Scott Eric Kaufman talks to Erik Loomis about the systematic outsourcing of dangerous and abusive jobs to countries where workers have no means of improving their conditions. And Jeremy Nuttall reports that while the Cons are trying to reduce the reported numbers from the temporary foreign worker program, they're going out of their way to set up alternative channels for easily-exploited labour.

- Meanwhile, Nicholas Keung reports on the Cons' profiling and blanket rejection of Roma visitors from Hungary.

- Dan Leger highlights how the Cons are interested in imposing strict and arbitrary accountability requirements on everybody except themselves as the government in power. And Stephen Maher is right to note that the political system generally tends to operate under different rules than nearly any other activity.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan discusses how the Cons are essentially defined by their mean streak. And Michael Harris writes about the widespread disenchantment of one-time PCs and Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- CBC follows up on the connection between childhood poverty and increased health-care costs later in life. And Sunny Freeman points out how the living wage planned by Rachel Notley's NDP figures to benefit Alberta's economy in general.

- Meanwhile, William Gardner laments our lack of accurate information on health and well-being in the wake of the Cons' census shredding, particularly among exactly the marginalized communities who are most likely to need help.

- And Richard Thaler reminds us why it's foolish to assume that people and economies can be treated as if they'll operate according to market ideals of perfect information and equality in bargaining power. 

- Gerald Caplan offers a warning to the Notley government as to what it can expect from a corporate establishment which considers itself to be above the will of the public. And in keeping with the theme of this week's column, David McGrane sees the NDP's victory as bringing Alberta's politics in line with those of the other prairie provinces.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne discusses how the Cons managed to fit nearly every possible indictment of their government into a single day's worth of legislative abuses and public deception. And Robin Sears highlights why the next federal election campaign figures to be far less predictable than the government which will be up for public scrutiny.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Jackson argues that contrary to the attempt of the Ecofiscal Commission to impose right-wing values like tax slashing and devolution on any action to deal with climate change, we in fact need the federal government to take a lead role:

While it is sensible in the current political context that provinces not wait for federal leadership, this does not mean those pushing for climate action should lessen our pressure on the federal government to lead. At a minimum, the federal government should be requiring all of the provinces to take some modest first steps to reduce emissions through carbon pricing along the lines set by BC and Quebec, perhaps soon to be followed by Ontario.

The Commission is right to point out that the emissions profiles of the provinces are very different, and that we would be wise to avoid levying carbon taxes in such a way as to set the stage for large transfers of fiscal resources between provinces. But it would be quite possible, as the report notes, to set a national minimum price on carbon that gives the provinces access to most of the revenue to fund their own climate change priorities.

The Commission’s report further notes that it would be “desirable” for the federal government to co-ordinate future provincial carbon pricing policies to ensure that businesses operate on a more or less level playing field. It could have added that there is a need for federal leadership in developing clean technologies and renewable energy generation and conservation programs, all of which have to be funded.

The clear failure of the Harper government to deal with climate change is no reason to give up on federal leadership writ large.

- Meanwhile, Ben Adler points out there's no reason to think that building new pipelines will reduce the risk of train explosions - particularly when the same people pushing for the pipelines are the same ones demanding lax standards for oil-transporting trains. And North Shore News writes that the English Bay fuel spill is as much a black mark on the Cons and the B.C. Libs as on the growing affected area.

- Patrick Caldwell highlights how cuts to tax collection agencies serve to undermine the public good on multiple levels - first by making them more difficult to deal with, then by reducing public revenues. And it's worth pointing out the final step, as the deliberate destruction of a tax collection service can only open the door for profiteers to take over the function of collecting revenue.

- Lynn Vavrick discusses the role of a presidential candidate in shifting votes in the U.S., finding that entrenched party loyalties far outweigh individual candidates. And Geoff Dembicki points out the potential for young voters to radically change Canada's electoral math.

- Finally, Tony Burman writes about the desperate lack of CSIS oversight even before it stands to be handed massive new powers under C-51, while Andrew Mitrovica draws a similar conclusion in interviewing CSIS' former inspector-general Eva Plunkett. And Gerald Caplan writes that while Tom Mulcair has been careful to avoid living up to the label his opponents have attempted to slap on him as the NDP's leader, Canadians have every reason to be angry with the Harper Cons.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Simon Wren-Lewis connects the UK's counterproductive austerity program to the lack of any wage growth. And Gary Lamphier observes that Alberta is serving as a case in point that jobs generated through public policy rigged in favour of the wealthy are no less precarious than any other type, while Erin Anderssen comments on the connection between public-sector work and greater wage equality.

- Adam Liptak writes that the First Amendment's protection for speech - like so many other rights which have been redefined to suit the powerful - is now serving primarily to benefit the corporate sector at the expense of the public.

- But we shouldn't accept perpetual corporate encroachment on the common good as inevitable. On that front, Paul Krugman reminds us that George W. Bush's attempts to push privatized Social Security failed miserably - and in a way which only proved the point of his opponents.

- Paul Kershaw highlights how the Saskatchewan Party's budget does nothing for a younger generation that's already being squeezed by a combination of massive costs and minimal opportunities. And Joe Friesen discusses David McGrane's study on the strong support for progressive policies among Canada's younger adults:

Prof. McGrane said one of the most interesting results is that the gap between older and younger people is relatively consistent across regions and education levels.

As one might expect, young people with a university education, those who live in big cities, and those in Ontario and British Columbia tend to be further to the left than those with lower levels of education and those in small cities and rural Canada, the study found, but over all, their differences are outweighed by what they hold in common.

“Young Canadians from nearly all of the socio-demographic groups and provinces examined were more likely than older Canadians to desire an activist government; want more social spending; be socially liberal; and favour higher taxes in exchange for better public services,” Prof. McGrane says in the study’s conclusion.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan calls out the immorality and irrationality of the Cons' plan for endless war in Iraq, Syria and anywhere else they can think to bomb.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan writes that we all bear some responsibility for growing inequality - and how we'll need to use our electoral power to reverse it:

(S)elf-sacrifice is not going to be the key to reducing inequality, with all the great damage it inflicts on society. Government needs to act, and Mr. Mackenzie offers perfectly realistic policies to any party that is seriously committed to greater equality. For example, the tax break on stock options generously provided by our government is worth a cool half-trillion to the top 100 – a nice day’s “work,” for sure. And since federal corporate taxes, an affordable 29 per cent only 15 years ago, now stand at 15 per cent, we can expect Mr. Mackenzie to report even higher rewards for his hearty band next January.

Anyone who dabbles in the field for even a moment knows there are lots of ideas for reducing inequality. Some are political non-starters but others are quite simple and workable. Knowing what to do is not the issue. The issue, as usual, is the political will to attack the problem frontally. The NDP is so far proposing a distinctly modest increase in corporate taxes, which is more than its opponents. As of now, with an election less than a year away, the big winner once again, and still champion, is inequality.

- Marc Lee rightly challenges the theory that any steps to deal with climate change should exacerbate inequality by being revenue-neutral.

- But Susana Mas reports that the Cons are once again refusing to consider any increases in revenue, and using their failed bet on an oil-dependent economy as an excuse to cut even further into Canada's public services.

- Karl Nerenberg notes that in addition to having the only plan to combat inequality, the NDP is also the only one party is willing to treat voters like adults. But it's worth noting that the NDP isn't the only party with a relatively detailed policy document: the difference is that the NDP has enough respect for members and the public alike to make its policy work readily accessible, while the Cons force non-members to go on a scavenger hunt (or at least search their site from the outside) to find theirs.

- Finally, Stephen Maher recognizes that the greatest threat we face from acts of terror lies in the people who would use the excuse to crack down on civil rights and freedoms.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Barrie McKenna comments on how far too many governments have bought into the P3 myth with our public money:

Governments in Canada have become seduced by the wonders of private-public partnerships – so-called P3s – and blind to their potentially costly flaws. In a typical P3 project, the government pays a private sector group to build, finance and operate everything from transit lines to hospitals, sometimes over decades.

These projects almost always cost significantly more than if governments just put up the money themselves and hired contractors to build the same infrastructure, under conventional contracts. Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk found that the province may have overpaid to the tune of $8-billion for 74 major infrastructure projects, dating back nine years.

A key factor is financing. Private-sector companies can’t borrow as cheaply as governments can, adding significantly to the cost, especially on contracts that may run for decades.

Other transaction costs, including lawyers and consultants, are also typically higher with P3s. But the biggest variable is the substantial price tag put on the risk shifted from governments to the private sector. Ontario is convinced the risks of cost overruns, delays, design flaws and the like are substantially lower with public-private partnerships, and it’s willing to pay a premium for that peace of mind.

Unfortunately, the government has struggled to accurately price that risk, relying on the murky and potentially inflated calculations of outside consultants. As Ontario Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid sheepishly admitted: “It is a bit of an art, identifying risk, as much as a science.”

Ontario’s Auditor-General is blunter, suggesting the government’s so-called “value assessments” are little more than junk science.
...
The allure may have a lot more to do with politics, than sound financial management. These projects give governments the ability to push spending down the road, with ribbon cuttings today and most of the bills due later.

They also allow governments to duck the inconvenient responsibility when things go terribly wrong. No politician, or bureaucrat, wants to have to explain why a high-profile project is late or over budget.

Taxpayers may have a very different perspective on the responsibilities of public officials, and a few good suggestions on what to do with an extra $8-billion.

- And James Bagnall notes that it's also a regular practice for the Cons and other governments to write the rules of supposedly neutral competitions to favour their preferred bidders.

- Jim Tankersley reports on the devaluation of the American worker over the past few decades. And David Climenhaga finds that Jim Prentice's idea of getting input about the needs of workers is to gather seven executives in a closed-door "blue ribbon" panel.

- Allan Maki interviews Ted Clugston about Medicine Hat's success in eradicating homelessness - though the most important lesson to be drawn from the story may be that we shouldn't let naysayers (which Clugston once was) stand in the way of vital public policies. And Cory Weinberg discusses San Francisco's push to make sure that underused public land directed toward meeting housing needs, while David Ball reports on a creative effort to make home ownership more affordable in Calgary.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan explains what he'd tell Stephen Harper if given the chance. But in light of the tiny odds of Harper having interest in a word of it, I suspect we're better off making the same statements to the general public.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- A Gandalf Group poll finds (PDF) that Canadians have come to perceive and expect a disturbing level of self-serving action by our political leaders. And while Dale Smith is right to note that we've largely limited the most obvious forms of corruption, there's still plenty of reason for concern that public policy is being driven by a few insiders and political cronies at the expense of the public.

- On that front, Gerald Caplan reminds us how the CRA is being used to silence only charities who promote social justice - while at the same time cutting back on collecting taxes from the people who owe the most:

The government somehow found an extra $13.4-million for the CRA to audit charities to ensure they were using tax dollars properly. As far as anyone can tell, all the new funds have been used to audit the government’s critics, none to audit its friends. The first wave of such audits mostly focused on environmental groups, but the net was later widened to include anti-poverty, international aid and human-rights groups that drive the Conservatives – and apparently the CRA – crazy.
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Indeed the Harper government has never hidden its opposition for certain charities, like the very ones the CRA has chosen to audit. For a while, for example, outrageous attacks on “radical” environmental groups that opposed new pipelines became de rigueur for members of the Harper government.

There’s a scandal within a scandal here as well. While the CRA is disrupting the work of often tiny NGOs, the government is simultaneously laying off international tax auditors who specialized in investigating the tax avoidance strategies of 1-per-cent-ers and corporations. Tax dollars lost to the public treasury are estimated in the multi-billions, which is why the G20, including Canada, has formally made cracking down on tax evasion a priority. Except when it’s not.

- And the CRA's selective attacks on charities fit all too well with the oil companies' own strategy of bullying dissenting voices into silence.

- PressProgress points out how the Cons' climate change negligence is sinking to new depths, with spokesflacks trying to pretend that Environment Canada's own scientific data is merely an "opinion" (to be ignored since it might be inconvenient for the Cons' oil baron base). And Aaron Wherry raises plenty of worthwhile followup questions which we can count on the Cons similarly refusing to address.

- Frank Soodeen highlights how secure housing for everybody serves both social and economic purposes.

- But of course, the Cons are instead determined to destroy the federal government's capacity to help people with boutique tax baubles - which lead to Stephen Tapp's call for a more sensible tax system.

- Finally, Salvator Cusimano and Nath Gbikpi write that the Cons are following the UK's model of deliberate exclusion and marginalization for refugees.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chris Matthews takes note of the gross growth of inequality in the U.S. Dean Baker notes that much of the wealth built on what's branded as "innovation" reflects little more than successful attempts to evade health, safety and consumer protection laws. And Mike De Souza explores how the notorious ALEC pushes climate denial and other anti-social policies with an alarming amount of support from businesses who (once challenged) claim not to know who they're funding.

- Meanwhile, Digby points out that the corporatist right is downright eager to work people to the point where they have to focus on bare survival rather than improving their lot in life. And Lana Payne warns us that the Cons are turning retirement into a luxury good rather than a reasonable expectation for most workers:

More and more Canadians believe they will never be able to retire, giving whole new meaning to the phrase “work till you drop.”
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(A) full 60 per cent (of Canadians) do not believe they have saved enough to retire in comfort. Not surprisingly, women and lower-income earners were even less likely to have saved enough.

Shockingly, one in five Canadians reported that they will never retire. In addition, nearly one-third of those surveyed said they didn’t know when they’d be able to retire. Stagnant wages are coming home to roost.

The survey also found that over 40 per cent of employers surveyed said their employees are overly optimistic with respect to their assessment of when they will be able to retire.

That is rather astonishing, considering the dreary outlook so many Canadians seem to hold about their ability to retire in comfort. Yet even Canadians’ low expectations about retirement are considered optimistic.
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CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, also supports enhancing CPP and notes the majority of Canadians agree. Indeed, the vast majority of CARP members see it as a ballot box question.

“We need federal and provincial governments willing to work together on a national solution to the national retirement savings problem,” CARP said in a statement.

It is clear that this won’t happen as long as the Harper Conservatives are in power.

We may as well add retirement income crisis to their legacy of neglect. Harper has been quoted as saying we won’t recognize Canada when he is done.

But damage can be undone, just as a new federal government can address the looming retirement crisis.

- But of course, the Cons are instead more interested in handing free money to families wealthy enough that they can already afford to have a parent stay home voluntarily. And even the Cons aren't pretending that income splitting could possibly offer meaningful help to households without a high-income worker - using that fact as an excuse to avoid offering any similar advantage for single-parent families.

- Mitch Jones points out that privatized water markets figure to do nothing but damage as we try to ensure the continued availability of a vital (and increasingly scarce) resource.

- Andrew Jackson reminds us that commodity markets are inevitably boom-and-bust - while recognizing that the Cons' obsession with pushing an oil-only economy has exposed Canada to dangerous risks as prices drop. And Mychaylo Prystupa reports that Kinder Morgan is SLAPPing Burnaby residents concerned about the effect of a pipeline expansion on their community.

- Finally, the Telegram slams the Cons for their continued contempt for election law - as well as their refusal to take responsibility for what's now a consistent, multiple-election pattern of illegality in their party. And Gerald Caplan writes that we should distinguish between mere members of Parliament and those who earn the title of "parliamentarian".

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Star criticizes the Harper Cons' selective interest in international cooperation - with war and oil interests apparently ranking as the only areas where the Cons can be bothered to work with other countries. And Catherine Porter reports that the Cons have demonstrated their actual attitude toward global cooperation and development by making huge cuts to foreign aid.

- Geoff Dembicki interviews Corinne Lepage about France's rightful resistance to oil lobbyists. But while it's well and good for individual countries to register their willingness to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, that doesn't much help when multilateral agreements limit a country's authority to act on its values. And on that front, Brent Patterson laments the impact of CETA on oil and gas regulation, while Murray Dobbin writes that the CETA looks like a prime example of a step taken solely for the benefit of the oil industry and other corporate interests:

While there has been attention paid to some key provisions of CETA -- such as its investor state rules, its impact on Canadian drug pricing and its curbs on governments' ability to buy local -- there has been almost nothing in the media about CETA's chapter on domestic regulation. But a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report on CETA suggests there should be, because the articles of that chapter seem designed to kill efforts to regulate the resource industry. In other words just as governments need to get deadly serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels they are tying their own hands through new restrictions on their right to regulate.

CETA's domestic regulation chapter would be more aptly called "Gifts for the Oil and Gas Industry." These CETA provisions are so biased in favour of corporations it is easy to picture industry execs sitting at the elbows of CETA's negotiators, guiding their pens as they draft the agreement. Short of an international treaty banning all government regulations outright, CETA gives the oil and gas industry virtually everything it has been asking for, for decades. Of course these anti-regulation gifts are also available to other sectors, including the mining industry, but given the special place in Harper's universe reserved for Alberta's oil patch it's not hard to see where the impetus came from.
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CETA places an absolute value on the ease with which corporations can get approval of their projects. It demands that parties ensure "that licensing and qualification procedures are as simple as possible and do not unduly complicate or delay the supply of a service or the pursuit of any other economic activity." (Art. 2, Sec. 7) Requiring that oil and gas companies do environmental assessments, archaeological studies or get approvals from different levels of government is clearly a process that could be made simpler by doing away with these requirements altogether. Obligations to consult with the public and First Nations certainly complicate the regulatory process and cause delays.

Whether or not governments have simplified their licensing processes to the absolute maximum extent possible and are not causing "undue" delays or complications would be up to a panel of trade lawyers to decide in the event of a dispute. They could look at examples from the most deregulated jurisdictions to determine what is "as simple as possible." China, for example, allows corporations to ignore requirements for environmental impact assessments (EIA) and just pay a small fine after the fact.

- Katherine Scott writes about the challenge of identifying and measuring poverty, but rightly concludes that we should be seeking to eradicate it in any form. And Carol Goar discusses how the Cons' war on science has resulted in the destruction of extremely important work on the spread of poverty in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Mike De Souza highlights the Environment Commissioner's findings about the Cons' gutting of federal environmental review processes. 

- Finally, Gerald Caplan observes that the Cons' hype of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights is in stark contrast to their contempt for the real thing.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan suggests that Rogers and Bell might be ripe for nationalization - though it's also worth pointing out that we don't have to guess what happens when a Crown delivers telecommunications services:

The British Labour Party has begun to make the case that market fundamentalism, or neoliberalism, is not necessarily the best way for society to operate. Specifically, it’s been trying to show that private enterprise is not always superior to public enterprise.

Beginning with Margaret Thatcher, British governments have denuded the UK of almost all public enterprises, from British Airways to the Royal Mail. The Labour Party Opposition wants to remind Brits that some entities actually make more sense under public auspices. Fortunately for them, I am in a position to offer my Labour comrades foolproof evidence for their gambit. Two words: Rogers and Bell.
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Long ago, when I was co-chairing the federal task force on Canadian Broadcasting, a few creative Canadians advocated that the telecommunications oligopolies be put under public ownership. It made perfect sense and was even arguably the Canadian way, like the CBC. But it was a political non-starter. No government has been prepared to consider it. The Harper government has tried to make easy political points by calling for a another major national player to join the game, as if that would force the existing predators to shape up. It’s a bad joke on us poor suckers.

But maybe it’s not too late for a real solution. Hey, Tom Mulcair: bringing Bell and Rogers and Telus and Shaw under public ownership? Now that’s a cause worth marching for. You’d unite suffering Canadians in their tens of millions from coast to coast to coast, getting them out onto the streets at last. Occupy Rogers! Occupy Bell! Everyone’s mad as hell at these guys, so why do we still have to take it?

- The Vancouver Sun is right to highlight the importance of the labour movement in advance of the Labour Day weekend. Meanwhile, B.C.'s provincial government has repeatedly attacked workers with unconstitutional legislation before shifting to a strategy of trying to bankrupt teachers rather than funding a functional education system - which apparently doesn't rate a mention.

- Robyn Benson discusses how the Cons are further restriction workers' access to employment insurance, as well as what unions and workers can do to fight back:

Under restrictive new rules introduced by the Harper government, working people who have paid into the EI fund for years receive no assistance when they find themselves jobless. Sure, they can always appeal, and then wait more than a year for a hearing. There used to be 1,000+ part-time referees to hear their cases: that’s now down to fewer than 70 people, trying to handle a backlog of 10,000 appeals. And after a lengthy delay, more than 80% of claimants lose their appeals anyway. Small wonder, we might think: the new EI appeals tribunal members are Conservative appointees, and several have donated money to the Conservative party.

New EI policies, designed to hurt rather than help; new appeal mechanisms, rigged against claimants; and employee cuts everywhere, made without rhyme or reason across the public service, as the Parliamentary Budget Office has just reported. And those cuts are far from over.

This is obviously a recipe for disaster from an unemployed person’s point of view. But it’s no picnic for our front-line workers in charge of the EI programs, either. All too frequently they get blamed for the bad policies they are required to administer. Yet it is government-created backlogs and delays and tight new rules that are the problem here, even if that very government has pointed the finger at its own employees on occasion to cover up its poor decision-making, and gone after conscientious whistle-blowers who object to being ordered to treat EI claimants unfairly.
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It’s pretty easy to see how common cause can be made here. This Labour Day, we should re-commit ourselves to forging these natural alliances between ourselves and the general public. We’re in for a challenging few months with the current round of collective bargaining—maybe the toughest period we’ve ever experienced as a union. But we’re not facing this government alone. Countless Canadians have their own reasons to want the Harper government gone, and can’t wait until the federal election next year. Time to join forces, folks. We’re going to need each other. 

- Andrew Duffy reports that in the absence of a functional census, Statistics Canada is now looking for alternatives which will involve amalgamating far more information about Canadians through a bevy of government databases in the hope of assembling the information which can no longer be collected directly.

- Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt wonders whether mandatory voting may be the best way to ensure broad public participation in the political decisions which affect us all.

- Finally, Jane Taber and Shawn McCarthy report on the agreement of Canada's premiers as to the outline (PDF) of a national energy strategy. But one point in particular stands out:

A Canadian Energy Strategy should:
...

• Maintain the highest degree of environmental safeguards and protection, including by addressing climate change, climate resilience and reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Which is to say that even Canada's oil-producing provinces are able to agree that a federal energy strategy should take into account the need for global emission reductions - leaving no justification at all for the Cons' habit of cheerleading for fossil fuels without accounting for the environmental damage done by their use elsewhere.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Danyaal Raza and Edward Xie write that a well-designed city environment can make all the difference in enabling individuals to live healthy lives:

What if city council took our health into account when designing neighbourhoods? An idea gaining favour in major cities around the world is “complete streets,” a city-planning concept that promotes development of streets usable by all citizens, whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, drivers or transit users. As things stand now, getting to schools, parks and stores without a car is only a dream for residents without the lush tree cover, dense transit networks and regularly spaced traffic crossings of downtown.

The science is clear: people are more likely to walk to a store if it can be reached within five to 10 minutes, while those who spent more time travelling by car had a greater likelihood of being obese. All it takes, according to a new international study, is an extra 2,000 steps a day — about 20 minutes of walking — to reduce heart attacks and strokes by 8 per cent in people at risk for diabetes. It should be no surprise, then, that building walkable neighbourhoods can discourage sprawl and prevent diabetes and its complications.
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Some innovative solutions already exist; in fact, Toronto has been a Canadian leader by creating the Toronto Food Policy Council in 1990 and adopting the bold Toronto Food Charter in 2001. The city already supports the FoodShare organization to bring grocery stands, school meals and inexpensive fresh food via mobile markets to residents who need them.

Still more can be done. A prosperous city is nourished by healthy, productive citizens. We need visionary city planning to remedy these problems with rational zoning, support for community initiatives and a city council that takes health seriously. 

- Meanwhile, Lynn Stuart Paramore argues that a four-day work week can be a plus for both employee well-being and employer outcomes.

- Lydia DePillis discusses how inequality can snowball, as exorbitant wealth drives up the price (and expected returns) from a limited set of positional goods. And Joyce Nelson looks at credit rating agencies as an example of big money seeking to perpetuate itself by imposing policies on everybody else.

- Will Horter wonders whether the Cons' determination to push pipelines and tankers will drive B.C. voters to seek new alternatives.

- Finally, Gerry Caplan sees a basic lack of decency as one of the defining features of the Cons. Which is why we shouldn't be surprised that Therese Casgrain - having fought for such causes as feminism, voting rights and social democracy - is being furiously erased from Canadian history in favour of further Harper hagiography.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Timothy Shenk discusses Thomas Piketty's contribution to a critique of unfettered capitalism and gratuitous inequality:

Seen from Piketty’s vantage point, thousands of feet above the rubble, the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Economic growth was a recent invention, major reductions to income inequality more recent still. Yet the aftermath of World War II was filled with prophets forecasting this union into eternity. Kuznets offered the most sophisticated expression of this cheerful projection. Extrapolating from the history of the United States between 1913 and 1948, he concluded that economic growth automatically reduced income inequality. This was the moment when, as Piketty observes with both regret and nostalgia, “the illusion that capitalism had been overcome” secured widespread acceptance.

Time soon deflated this optimism. Although the growth of global GDP has accelerated—billions of people across Asia are now catching up to their rivals, a position analogous to Europe after World War II—the best available evidence suggests that these levels are impossible to sustain at the technological frontier. Europe’s per capita growth dropped to just below 2 percent from 1980 to 2012; the United States’ was even slower, coming in at 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, the link between rising GDP and falling inequality was severed, with the largest gains from diminished growth flowing to the richest of the rich—not even to the 1 percent, but to the one-tenth of 1 percent and higher.

Although the contours of Piketty’s history confirm what economic historians already know, his anatomizing of the 1 percent’s fortunes over centuries is a revelation. When joined to his magisterial command of the source material and his gift for synthesis, they disclose a history not of steady economic expansion but of stops and starts, with room for sudden departures from seemingly unbreakable patterns. In turn, he links this history to economic theory, demonstrating that there is no inherent drive in markets toward income equality. It’s quite the opposite, in fact, given the tendency for the returns on capital to outpace growth.
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Despite the lengthy historical surveys, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as its title implies, is as much about the future as it is about the past. Per capita growth for developed economies, Piketty believes, has settled at approximately its maximum sustainable rate, around 1 percent annually. That was enough to make people in the nineteenth century feel they were caught in perpetual revolution, but judged by the best of the twentieth century, or China and India today, it seems positively anemic. With growth reduced, escalating income inequality is all but inevitable without aggressive policy intervention. Piketty’s demand for a global progressive tax on capital has garnered the most attention, usually from commentators eager to dismiss it as utopian. But the global tax is more of a rhetorical gambit than a substantive proposal. It is designed to make Piketty’s real aspiration—the same tax, but confined to the European Union—seem more attainable. When the alternative requires obtaining planetary consent, making one continent sign on to a policy becomes a reasonable reach. Countries as large as the United States, he believes, could go it alone with considerable success.

Progressive taxation of capital is one part of a larger project that Piketty calls building “a social state for the twenty-first century.” This economist is no revolutionary: the major arguments over the structure of government, he believes, have already been settled. The twentieth century bequeathed a vision of government responsible for the education, health and pensions of its citizens, and those obligations will be upheld in the twenty-first. For Piketty, the most urgent task is not raising the general welfare but clawing back the advances of the 1 percent. Much needs to be done, he writes, “to regain control over a financial capitalism that has run amok.”

- The Globe and Mail slams the Cons for continuing to push the Unfair Elections Act, while Michael Bolen and Lawrence Martin both see it as a northern expansion of Republican-style vote suppression. Adam Shedletzky worries that it represents the end of reason in our electoral system, while Patti Tamara Lenard discusses its infringement on voting rights. And Bruce Cheadle reports that the federal government defended the Cons' previous ID requirements by pointing to exactly the vouching process which is to be eviscerated under the Unfair Elections Act.

- Meanwhile, Alice Funke notes that the Cons' current MPs are fleeing into seemingly safer new ridings - suggesting they don't think they can win where they did in 2011. And Chantal Hebert points out Stephen Harper's eroding support - offering another indication as to why fighting a fair election in 2015 simply isn't an option for the Cons. 

- Andrew Nikiforuk writes about the combination of minimal safety enforcement and high rates of worker injuries in the tar sands. And PressProgress wonders whether this will be the week that the oil industry's constant spin finally unravels.

- The Globe and Mail argues that we should be encouraging long-term immigration rather than driving down wages through temporary and disposable labour.

- And finally, Gerald Caplan analyzes Quebec's provincial election, and finds that the biggest winner was a party which didn't contest it:

(S)omething significant seems to have changed within Quebec’s political culture. It appears that many young Quebecois, traditionally separatists and social democrats, voted Liberal Monday night to express their weariness with separatism and their disillusionment with the PQ’s embrace of Pierre-Karl Peladeau and neoliberalism. That’s nothing but good news for the NDP. In the 2011 federal election, many young Québécois abandoned the Bloc and joined the Layton orange wave, electing a ginormous contingent of NDP candidates. Under Tom Mulcair, those MPs, many young and inexperienced, have acquitted themselves surprisingly well. If played right – a big “if” for any political party, as Monday’s election reminded us – their appeal to younger Quebecois should be another NDP slam dunk.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Graeme Wearden reports on Oxfam's latest study on inequality and the outsized political influence of the wealthy few:

The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues ranging from financial deregulation, tax havens, anti-competitive business practices to lower tax rates on high incomes and cuts in public services for the majority. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out of 30 countries for which data are available, said the report.

This "capture of opportunities" by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes has led to a situation where 70% of the world's population live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and 1% of families own 46% of global wealth - almost £70tn.

Opinion polls in Spain, Brazil, India, South Africa, the US, UK and Netherlands found that a majority in each country believe that wealthy people exert too much influence. Concern was strongest in Spain, followed by Brazil and India and least marked in the Netherlands.
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Oxfam is calling on those gathered at WEF to pledge: to support progressive taxation and not dodge their own taxes; refrain from using their wealth to seek political favours that undermine the democratic will of their fellow citizens; make public all investments in companies and trusts for which they are the ultimate beneficial owners; challenge governments to use tax revenue to provide universal healthcare, education and social protection; demand a living wage in all companies they own or control; and challenge other members of the economic elite to join them in these pledges.

- Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute is assembling support among economists for an increase in the U.S.' minimum wage. And Rob Rainer discusses why Canada should ensure a basic income guarantee as a matter of values and conscience.

- Bloomberg reports on the latest Enbridge oil spill just outside Regina. But Sheila Pratt points out why we probably can't expect even another incident close to home to lead to any meaningful public discussion - noting that the atmosphere of tar sands intimidation in Alberta has reached the point where doctors are refusing to treat patients who observe a connection between their illnesses and oil development.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan discusses the reality Stephen Harper should try to see during the course of his trip to Israel - while acknowledging the certainty that Harper will avoid it at all costs.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- The CP reports on the latest federal-provincial discussion about pensions. And as is so often the case, all parties at the table seem to agree that there's an important problem to be fixed - even as Brad Wall, Stephen Harper and others stand firmly in the way of any actual change to ensure a more secure retirement for Canadians.

- Gerald Caplan wonders whether the Cons' base will give up on Harper, while Dan Leger thinks it's Harper himself who should start turning his loyalties elsewhere. But Andrew Coyne offers up the definitive take on the Cons coming out of their closed-door Calgary convention - even if he's a little ways behind the curve in noticing some cultish tendencies:

But the impression was that of a party closing in on itself, of a leadership that accepts no blame for the depths into which the party has sunk, but that sees itself as wholly the victim of outside enemies. As a short-term strategy for preserving internal unity, this has its uses. The problem is that the list of enemies keeps growing, and as it grows, starts to include more and more of the party’s staunchest supporters. Some of the prime minister’s closest confidants and advisers are now on the list, from Tom Flanagan to — the scapegoat of the month — Nigel Wright.
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Thus the Conservative tragedy grinds on. When your only principle is paranoia — when your central organizing proposition is that “everyone is out to get us” — when every criticism is merely confirmation of the essential rightness of that proposition, and every deviation is evidence of disloyalty, then you are less a party than a cult.

I don’t say that is what the party has become. But it is an early warning sign in any group when its members are required to cut themselves off from the outside world.

- It will surely come as a shock - particularly for those paid to pretend otherwise - to learn that supposedly unbreachable containment ponds may not live up to their billing. And Robyn Allan discusses the cynical manipulation behind Christy Clark's attempt to sell pipelines and tanker traffic by telling British Columbians their only other choice is even more hazardous transport of tar sand products by rail.

- Finally, Stuart Trew discusses Canada's sudden and unexpected ratification of rules taking yet more power out of the hands of governments and open courts to better serve the interests of transnational corporations.