Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jeff Rubin writes that the hoarding of supplies over the course of the coronavirus pandemic has provided compelling evidence that globalization falls apart just when it's needed most. And Amir Attaran warns that the Libs' failure to recognize that reality may leave Canada years behind other developed countries in being able to deploy vaccines.

- The Globe and Mail's editorial board writes that we're just entering a new phase of the fight against COVID-19. Apoorva Mandavelli reports on new research showing that live coronavirus can float through air. And Monica Gandhi highlights how cloth masks protect both the wearer and others by limiting the amount of the virus transmitted through any interaction.

- Sam Gindin discusses the importance of rooting organization in the working class in order to counter the power of both capital and institutional inertia.

- Doreen Nicoll warns about the effect of public-private partnerships which remove democratic control over water, turning it instead into purely a commodity. And Sarah Rieger reports on Nichole Robinson's swimming protest against Jason Kenney's plans to prioritize coal mining over clean drinking water in Alberta. 

- Finally, Martin Lukacs and Tim Groves expose how corporations and wealthy individuals have been militarizing Canadian police departments against citizen activism.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dion Rabouin offers a reminder that corporate tax giveaways don't do anything to help the economy beyond the interests of wealthy shareholders. And Nicole Aschoff discusses the importance of building a model for progressive globalism to counter the reach of international capital.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress notes that the Libs' Infrastructure Bank is siding squarely with the latter by looking to turn municipal water supplies into fodder for corporate operators.

- Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryn WuDunn write about the deaths of despair which are lowering American life expectancies.

- Andrew Nikiforuk observes that B.C. fracking is causing the earthquakes which have long been anticipated, creating massive and avoidable risks to the province's dam infrastructure.

- Finally, Greg Jericho calls out the attempt of Scott Morrison's government to claim credit for climate negligence and "reductions" which involve the continued accumulation of carbon pollution - a position which is of course all too familiar in the Canadian context.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Larry Elliott writes that a corporate-centred model of globalization is unlikely to survive the Trump regime. And Jeff Spross proposes an alternative which allows for people to be free and capital to be controlled, rather than the other way around.

- But Jo Becker notes that large amounts of money and disinformation are pushing for nationalism and xenophobia around the globe, rather than any recognition of our shared interests in a fair and connected system of international relations.

- Benjamin Fearnow reports on the FBI's insistence on treating peaceful activists for minority rights as a larger threat than violent white supremacists. And Robin Ttess discusses how Canada's security state has been used at the behest of the oil industry to spy on and stifle Indigenous peoples and environmental activists.

- Andy Blatchford reports on the Trudeau Libs' delays and obfuscations about supplying armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

- Finally, Alan Freeman debunks the Fraser Institute's regularly-scheduled attempt to gaslight Canadians about taxes by refusing to acknowledge what individuals actually pay as well as what public revenue funds.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Lucas Chancel points out the myths underlying any claim that corporate globalization does anything but voluntarily exacerbate inequality:

It is often said that rising inequality is inevitable — that it is a natural consequence of trade openness and digitalization that governments are powerless to counter. But the numbers presented above clearly demonstrate the diversity of inequality trajectories experienced by broadly comparable regions over the past decades. The U.S. and Europe, for instance, had similar population size and average income in 1980 — as well as analogous inequality levels. Both regions have also faced similar exposure to international markets and new technologies since, but their inequality trajectories have radically diverged. In the U.S., the bottom 50% income share decreased from 20% to 10% today, whereas in Europe it decreased from 24% to 22%.

Rather than openness to trade or digitalization, it is policy choices and institutional changes that explain divergences in inequality. After the neoliberal policy shift of the early 1980s, Europe resisted the impulse to turn its market economy into a market society more than the US — evidenced by differences on key policy areas concerning inequality. The progressivity of the tax code — how much more the rich pay as a percentage — was seriously undermined in the U.S., but much less so in continental Europe. The U.S. had the highest minimum wage of the world in the 1960s, but it has since decreased by 30%, whereas in France, the minimum wage has risen 300%. Access to higher education is costly and highly unequal in the U.S., whereas it is free in several European countries. Indeed, when Bavarian policymakers tried to introduce small university fees in the late 2000s, a referendum invalidated the decision. Health systems also provide universal access to good-quality healthcare in most European countries, while millions of Americans do not have access to healthcare plans.

Re-examining these pervasive beliefs around globalization and its impacts on global inequality is more important now than ever before. Using new data from the World Inequality Report is the first step in rectifying these myths and generating a new public discourse that has the potential to effect long-lasting, systemic change.

- Tonia Novitz, Alan Bogg, Katie Bales, Michael Ford and Roseanne Russell discuss the lack of good work in the gig economy.

- Marie-Danielle Smith reports on the Libs' deficient excuse for arms control legislation, whose loopholes include a failure to revisit export contracts in the face of new human rights abuses.

- Meanwhile, Marco Chown Oved reports on the some positive measures in cracking down on corporate tax avoidance - though it's worth noting that those join so many of the Libs' other progressive promises in being deferred past the next election.

- Finally, the Western Producer weighs in on the folly of pretending that gun violence is a worthwhile price for the protection of property. And James Hamblin comments on the stress and anxiety children face when confronted with active-shooter drills and other activities which normalize fear and violence.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Dennis Howlett writes that a properly designed and fair tax system can reduce inequality both by ensuring support for the people with the least, and ensuring that the people capable of contributing the most actually do so:

We need to tackle inequality at both ends of the income scale. Everyone, even the rich, benefits from a more equal society with better population health, reduced crime, better educational and employment opportunities, and a more vigorous economy.

Recent progressive income tax reforms can only do so much. That’s because our tax system continues to be riddled by unfair and ineffective tax loopholes that allow the wealthy to avoid paying anything close to the top marginal rate on much of their income.

And we don’t have any real tax on wealth (as opposed to income). The Alternative Federal Budget 2017 (link is external), which CPJ and Canadians for Tax Fairnes (C4TF) have contributed to, proposed that the federal government tax wealth by introducing a minimum inheritance tax of 45 per cent on estates valued above $5 million. This would net an estimated $2 billion annually in new revenues.

C4TF has identified over $16 billion in unfair and ineffective tax loopholes that should be closed. The most egregious ones include the Stock Options Deduction, the Capital Gains Deduction, and the Business Entertainment Tax Deduction.

On the other end of the income scale, Canada’s tax system is also able to transfer benefits to low-income Canadians in a very efficient way. It has reduced poverty among seniors and families with children. But we still have high levels of poverty in Canada and we need to do much more.
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More than 12 per cent of working- age Canadians live in relative poverty. Provincial minimum wages and social assistance rates fall far below the poverty line. While child and senior poverty has been the focus of government anti-poverty initiatives in recent years, very little attention has been given to addressing working age poverty. The federal government has some tools available that could tackle this problem. A very cost effective and efficient way to deliver benefits to many low-income Canadians would be to boost the GST/HST credit. This benefit now costs about $4 billion. C4TF recommends doubling this amount for an additional expenditure of $4 billion a year. All of these enhancements to current programs would cost about $6 billion a year. They could easily be funded by closing some of the $16 billion of unfair and ineffective tax loopholes.

- Stephen Roach writes that people are increasingly skeptical of globalization in a form which restricts any benefit to a privileged few. And Daniel Boffey reports on the disproportionate role the UK and the Netherlands play in providing conduits to offshore tax evasion.

- Meanwhile, Max Lawson points out that states including Namibia, Malawi and Mongolia are putting the rest of the world to shame in their policy choices to rein in inequality. 

- Christine Saulnier and Tammy Findlay examine how to develop a universal child care system in Nova Scotia. And Raisa Deber discusses what we should fund through a universal medicare system - including plenty of services not yet included in Canada's system, but not unnecessary procedures which are all too often covered by the public dime.

- Finally, Aurangzeb Qureshi asks how we can give CSIS a blank cheque with the rights of all Canadians when it can't even avoid gross discrimination against its own employees.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Josh Bivens notes that international trade deals have been structured to maximize the cost of globalization for the workers excluded from the bargaining table. And Jon Queally points out that a massive majority of Americans see power disproportionately hoarded by the rich at the expense of everybody else.

- So it should come as no surprise (as noted by Frank Clemente) that the corporate sector is avoiding making a fair contribution to funding collective programs - even while whining constantly about what little it is required to pitch in. And Chuck Collins discusses how much wealth is being hidden by the most privileged few.

- Kashana Cauley discusses the importance of a youth-led labour movement to ensure that changing priorities and workplaces are reflected in union strategies. And Democratic Audit UK examines the legal structures needed to protect workers' rights, while Paul Willcocks offers some suggestions as to how British Columbia's new government can bolster job quality and economic fairness.

- Evan Horowitz highlights the reality that an effective anti-poverty strategy can't rely solely on jobs and education, but instead needs to ensure that money gets into the hands of the people who need it most. And Left Foot Forward notes that the creation of precarious and low-wage jobs does nothing to improve the lives of the people who can't escape them.

- Finally, Nora Loreto and Michael Stewart ask whether Canada's media has a right-wing bias in granting unjustified air time (and credence) to reactionary ignorance.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Neil Irwin writes that many progressive policies - including child care and income tax credits - serve the goal of facilitating economic participation far better than their right-wing "supply side" counterparts.

- Ann Pettifor examines the future of globalization, and warns that a failure to properly regulate financial markets may be stoking public resentment toward the flow of people and goods.

- Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo study the effects of automation in cutting into both available employment and wage levels. And Vili Lehdonvirta writes about the role a basic income could play in countering the problems with the gig economy.

- Poppy Noor suggests that we treat housing as a human right rather than primarily a market good - and discusses the far more fair society that would result. And Gary Younge points out how austerian politics lead to a direct humanitarian toll.

- Ezra Klein discusses new research showing that the U.S.' political polarization is worse among older people (who make less use of social media, and rely more on television or radio echo chambers) than younger ones who are exposed to at least some different viewpoints.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig calls out Justin Trudeau's refusal to participate in talks on unclear disarmament, taking Canada well outside its self-perceived role as a leader in multilateral peacemaking.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Katha Pollitt reviews Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, and identifies the problem that profiteers have a vested interest in perpetuating poverty:

What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and impulsive and irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? What if the problem is that poverty is profitable? These are the questions at the heart of Evicted, Matthew Desmond’s extraordinary ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing in the deindustrialised middle-sized city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

You might not think that there is a lot of money to be extracted from a dilapidated trailer park or a black neighbourhood of “sagging duplexes, fading murals, 24-hour daycares”. But you would be wrong. Tobin Charney makes $400,000 a year out of his 131 trailers, some of which are little better than hovels. Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher who is one of the only black female landlords in the city, makes enough in rents on her numerous properties – some presentable, others squalid – to holiday in Jamaica and attend conferences on real estate.
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Desmond lays out the crucial role housing plays in creating and reinforcing white privilege. In Milwaukee, one of the most segregated cities in the US, all black people suffer from housing discrimination and all white people benefit at least a little from the racial dividend – a landlord who will rent to them but not to black people, for instance, or offer them a nicer apartment. Black people have the worst housing in the worst neighbourhoods – the great fear of the trailer-park people, who are all white, is that they will end up on the black side of town. Eviction hits black women hardest of all, and the bleak benches of housing courts, which deal with disputes between landlords and tenants, are full of black women and their children: “If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighbourhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.”

What are the social costs of eviction? It puts incredible stress on families. It prevents people from saving the comparatively small sums that would let them stabilise their situation. They are always starting over from scratch, losing their possessions in the chaos of removal, or putting them in storage and losing them when they can’t pay the fees. An eviction on your record makes the next apartment harder to get. Eviction damages children, who are always changing schools, giving up friends and toys and pets – and living with the exhaustion and depression of their parents. We watch Jori go from a sweet, protective older brother to an angry, sullen boy subject to violent outbursts who is falling way behind in school.

Eviction makes it hard to keep up with the many appointments required by the courts and the byzantine welfare system: several characters have their benefits cut because notices are sent to the wrong address. Eviction destroys communities: when people move frequently, they don’t form the social bonds and pride in place that encourage them to care for their block and look out for their neighbours.

- Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin and Paul Bloom examine the relationship between fairness and inequality, and find that people's more intuitions are aimed more toward the former than the latter.

- Frank Fear discusses how "progressive neoliberalism" is undermining the progressive movement by opening up even more space for neoliberal management theories to dominate politics. And Jared Bernstein argues that we'll achieve better policy results by directly providing for the outcomes we want, rather than hoping for market mechanisms or other complex structures to achieve them indirectly. 

- Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen points out that trade over long distances as a proportion of total trade hasn't changed over the past three decades - meaning that the growing dominance of capital in that time can't be explained solely by globalization as a value-neutral principle. 

- Finally, Steve Lambert reports on Wab Kinew's entry into the Manitoba NDP's leadership race.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz write that we shouldn't let governments and businesses off the hook for regressive policy choices by blaming technology. And Ben Tarnoff points out that any effects on the distribution of income and wealth can be dealt with through a fair tax system.

- Simon Tilford likewise argues that the most important problems with our current economic system lie not in the concept of globalization, but in the decisions made by governments to put businesses ahead of people:

(S)uccessive American and British governments were not forced by ‘globalisation’ to allow executive pay to balloon. This reflects failures of corporate governance. While pretty much all developed countries have seen rapid pay growth at the top, nowhere has the explosion of boardroom pay been as big as in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Similarly, the US choice to cut taxes for the wealthy over the last 35 years was a domestic one, aimed allegedly at releasing animal spirits and driving entrepreneurship. US governments were not compelled to do so in order to bolster the country’s attractiveness to international investors. After all, not all developed countries have followed this route and they have not suffered for it. On the contrary, many of the countries that have flourished from globalisation – the Nordics, for example – are those that levy high income taxes on the wealthy and relatively high taxes on wealth.
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Governments need to do much more to ease the burden of adjustment in areas negatively affected by increased trade, much as they need to do more to support areas whose established industries have been wiped out by technological change. Some countries have been successful at doing this, investing in active training policies, and infrastructure in affected areas. Others, notably the US and the UK, have been less effective in doing so.

However, some things do require greater international governance. First, there is some evidence that globalisation does make it harder to raise the tax needed to address inequality and combat declining social mobility. Multinationals can pay tax where tax rates are low rather than where they generate their revenue, and some have chosen this route. As a result, many governments have competed to lower taxes on business, which has meant having to raise taxes elsewhere, usually on low to average earners, and on consumption. Globalisation has made it easier for high earners to avoid tax, because it is now more straightforward to hold wealth offshore and the wealthy derive much of their income from wealth.

Multinationals should be taxed where they generate their cash flow or add value, not where tax rates are lowest. The OECD has done a lot of work on how co-ordination between member-states' governments could bring this about, but implementation has been slow, not least because of opposition from governments of countries that act as tax havens. Closer coordination between national tax authorities is making it harder for the wealthy to hold wealth offshore, but here too there is a long way to go. In the meantime, national governments could also do more to ensure the tax burden is equitable, for example by increasing taxes on immobile factors, such as land, rather than loading more tax onto labour and consumption.
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There is little mystery why popular frustration and resentment are rising in many developed countries. Economic growth has been weak for a decade. Living standards are under pressure. The benefits of what growth there has been has largely accrued to the wealthy, and social mobility is under pressure. The responsibility for these trends does not lie with remote, unaccountable global forces, but largely with national governments. Globalisation does not render them powerless. And where it does undercut their power, they could work together to bolster their influence.

- Myriam Alexander-Kearns and Alison Cassady write that the Trump administration and Republican Congress are going far out of their way to endanger public health and safety in the name of easy corporate profits. And CBC reports on the continued leakage of mercury near the Grassy Narrows First Nation, while PressProgress exposes how public funding promised for indigenous children is instead finding its way into the pockets of the mining sector.

- Barrie McKenna takes note of Timothy Lane's justified warnings that climate change stands to radically reshape our economy and society. And Calla Wahlquist discusses the dangers of extreme heat in particular.

- Finally, Jesse McLaren highlights how the fight for fair wages and work conditions ties into the overall goal of greater social health.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dean Baker discusses some of the myths about the effects of corporate globalization - with particular attention to how our current trade and immigration structures are designed to provide easy profits for capital at the expense of labour around the world. And Jason Hickel reports on new research showing how the developed world (or at least its upper class) is extracting trillions of dollars from the countries which can least afford to lose them.

- James Kwak comments on the massive gap between the effects of minimum-wage increases as threatened based on oversimplified economic theories, and the real-world impacts which have been beneficial for workers and the broader economy alike. 

- The International Labour Organization reviews the continued lack of secure employment around the globe. And Ashley Cowburn reports on the UK public's strong support for the idea of reining in CEO income compared to that of a business' general workforce.

- Alexander Kaufman highlights Rex Tillerson's implausible denial that he has any idea Exxon and other oil companies enjoy public subsidies. And Ross Belot points out that based on then Libs' combination of nominal greenhouse gas emissions targets and plans which fall far short of meeting them, we're likely to see yet another public giveaway to the oil sector in the form of carbon bailouts.

- Finally, Dennis Gruending offers his take on the need for a public response to the threat of mass surveillance.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Eshe Nelson interviews Richard Baldwin about the future of globalization and the possibility that the worst disruptions to workers are just beginning:

What happens to the chart on global income distribution during this phase of globalization?

It keeps going down. It will be disruptive in the G7, but instead of just in the manufacturing sector, it spreads to services. Only about 10-15% of the population works directly in manufacturing in the G7—the rest work in services. It will create great opportunities in many of the countries that have been left behind by earlier globalization, for instance almost all of sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

You say governments need to do more for the losers of globalization. How?

We have to look for inspiration from northern European countries who have comprehensive retraining, help with housing, help with relocation. Typically they have the unions, governments, and companies working together to try and keep the social cohesion. It doesn’t always work, but at least they try and most people feel that the government is helping them.

What about education? 

We need to change the education system so you spend less time when you are young learning to be hyper-specialized and more lifelong learning. The jobs that will still be here will require face-to-face skills and making networks of human interactions work. Telepresence and telerobotics won’t replace those.

- Patricia Cohen points out that wages have already been stagnant for far too many over the past few decades. And Owen Jones highlights the need for a progressive answer to a neoliberal economic model designed to limit any benefits to the wealthy few.

- Heather Whiteside discusses how the public stands to lose out from the free investor profits baked into the Libs' infrastructure bank scheme. And James Wilt points out that the Libs' privatization plans for ports will only increase the risks from oil shipping.

- Vanessa Blanch writes that the success of "housing first" pilot projects as a means of addressing homelessness still hasn't led to any sustained action. And Chris Hall reports on a needed push by 16 health organizations for mental health resources from all levels of government.

- Finally, the Star reminds us that Stephen Harper's politically-ordered attacks on charities have continued by the Canada Revenue Agency since he lost power - and calls for the Libs to put a much-needed end to them.