Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Ezra Klein comments on the U.S.' doom loop of oligarchy - as accumulated wealth is spent to buy policy intended to benefit nobody other than those who have already accumulated wealth:

On Thursday, the House passed Paul Ryan's 2015 budget. In order to get near balance, the budget contains $5.1 trillion in spending cuts — roughly two-thirds of which come from programs for poor Americans. Those cuts need to be so deep because Ryan has pledged not to raise even a dollar in taxes.

As a very simple rule, rich people pay more in taxes and poor people benefit more from services. So if you pledge to balance the budget without raising taxes, you're going to end up making the rich richer and the poor poorer. But Ryan goes further than that: he actually cuts taxes on the rich.
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Wealthy people will be even better poised to influence the 2014 and 2016 elections than they were to influence the 2010 and 2012 elections. Now, wealthy people are not a single voting bloc, but most wealthy people would like to continue being wealthy. And so you see bipartisan movement towards policies that protect their wealth, most recently with the Democratic legislature in Maryland voting to eliminate the state's estate tax.

Over time, a political system that gives the wealthy more power is a political system that is going to do more to protect the interests of the wealthy. It's the Doom Loop of Oligarchy, and we're seeing it daily.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford documents Canada's own descent into neoliberalism. And Carol Goar highlights how the Cons are doing their utmost to eliminate opportunities for young workers.

- The National Post's editorial board points out the absurdity of the Cons attacking their own appointed Chief Electoral Officer. Andrew Coyne calls out the Cons for turning what should be wholly unobjectionable principles - such as an accurate census and a fair electoral system - into their own political firing line. And Tabatha Southey duly mocks the assertion that Elections Canada is the new Illuminati.

- But then, a party merrily engaged in systemic illegality - such as, say, interference with access to information - figures to have little choice but to try to shout down any investigation which might reveal what it's actually up to.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom reminds us about some of Jim Flaherty's deliberate cuts to important public services including the CBC. And PressProgress charts how Lib and Con governments alike have slashed Canada's public broadcaster over the past three decades.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Stewart Prest writes about the Cons' war against experts:

(I)n modern democratic states one of the most important sources for non-partisan information and expertise is the government itself. Government bureaucracies are the only institutions in the world today with the access, the resources, and the motivation to systematically monitor and study the entirety of a country’s population and the extent of its human and natural environment.

Examples are legion, from statisticians to health officials to diplomats to environmental scientists. They exist throughout the much maligned but nonetheless vital bureaucracy of the country. Crucially, their professional incentives push them to resist conclusions that may even be perceived as partisan. After all, a long-serving civil servant will work under different parties and political masters. Their professional success comes from striving to provide politically neutral advice and support for political decision-making, and engaging in equally neutral policy implementation. Though part of the machinery of the state, these experts are — or ought to be — distinct and largely independent from the particular partisan interests of the government of the day.
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It is for this reason so alarming that, in field after field, this type of politically relevant, yet non-partisan expertise is being removed from public discourse. I see three mechanisms at work: expertise is consistently being suppressed, undermined, or — pardon the jargon — partisanized. Consequently, Canadian citizens and political leaders alike are operating with reduced access to expert information and judgment, precisely at a time when, given the spiralling complexity and competitiveness of the global environment, such advice has never been more important.

- Jeremy Rifkin notes that many theories about market functions are fast becoming obsolete as the cost of producing increasingly large groups of goods and services drops near zero.

A formidable new technology infrastructure — the Internet of Things — is emerging with the potential to push much of economic life to near zero marginal cost over the course of the next two decades. This new technology platform is beginning to connect everything and everyone. Today more than 11 billion sensors are attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks and recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores and vehicles, feeding big data into the Internet of Things. By 2020, it is projected that at least 50 billion sensors will connect to it.

People can connect to the network and use big data, analytics and algorithms to accelerate efficiency and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just as they now do with information goods. For example, 37 million buildings in the United States have been equipped with meters and sensors connected to the Internet of Things, providing real-time information on the usage and changing price of electricity on the transmission grid. This will eventually allow households and businesses that are generating and storing green electricity on-site from their solar and wind installations to program software to take them off the electricity grid when the price spikes so they can power their facilities with their own green electricity and share surplus with neighbors at near zero marginal cost.

Cisco forecasts that by 2022, the private sector productivity gains wrought by the Internet of Things will exceed $14 trillion. A General Electric study estimates that productivity advances from the Internet of Things could affect half the global economy by 2025.

THE unresolved question is, how will this economy of the future function when millions of people can make and share goods and services nearly free?

- Meanwhile, CBC takes a brief look at the causes and effects of growing income inequality as a global trend. And Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin report on the connection between the Koch brothers and the tar sands - which of course links back to their funding to further the cause of wealth disparity.

- Armine Yalnizyan and Karl Nerenberg look back on austerity, inequality and the other legacies of Deficit Jim Flaherty. And Ron Waller approves of the NDP's opening observations about new Finance Minister Joe Oliver.

- Finally, Alex Boutilier reports on the Cons' efforts to hide any explanation for their Unfair Elections Act. But at least until it's officially muzzled, Elections Canada is doing its part to identify and warn the public about electoral fairness issues before it's too late. 

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rick Smith hopes that the Cons' backtracking on income splitting means that they won't go quite as far out of their way to exacerbate income inequality in the future:

(T)he unfortunate reality is that we are still becoming ever more unequal, a trend due in large measure to political choices. Many countries have found ways to mitigate the growth of income inequality, while in Canada the policy response has tended to reinforce rather than offset the trend.

We know that since the mid-1990s, the social role of government has been dramatically cut back and its redistributive impact has faded. According to the OECD, government taxes and transfers lowered the gap between rich and poor most in Canada, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. By the early 2000s, we joined Switzerland and the U.S. as the countries with the smallest redistributive impact.

That’s why I take caution not to overstate things here. But I do believe Mr. Flaherty’s remarks signal some hope that there is growing public support and political will to address income inequality. At the very least, important public policy will now be tested against a simple and compelling principle: Does this make income inequality better or worse?

- Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy asks people to consider what they'd want to see done if they were finance minister - rather than accepting that we're stuck with the Cons' warped priorities. And Michael Laxer has some suggestions for Andrea Horwath as to how to genuinely make life more affordable for most Ontarians.

- Darcy Henton reports that Alberta's P3 school construction fiasco is only getting worse - as a government-commissioned study makes clear that the schools intended to be turned into corporate profit centres might never get built at all since they might not quite be lucrative enough.

- Finally, Karen Foster offers some important advice for young workers:

(N)early every public voice is telling you that you need to change. As Trish Hennessy put it on the CBC’s Bottom Line panel, we’ve individualized the problems of underemployment and skills mismatches and student debt. Our societal problem has become your personal problem. That’s why everyone’s turning themselves into knots to offer you advice.

My advice to you? Get angry.

Channel your anxiety about getting a job into frustration that we’re back here, again, talking about a “lost generation”, just like we were in the 1980s and 1990s.

Be indignant. When someone tells you it’s your fault for doing sociology instead of welding, tell them to stuff it.

When someone assures you it’ll get better in 10-15 years when the boomers retire, try repeating it back to them so they can hear how ludicrous it is.
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The real injustice is not that you are overqualified for or mismatched to the jobs available to you, but that the career you’re shooting for is probably being dismantled into a set of lower-wage, no-benefits, no-security jobs. This is the trend in government, where temporary contracts are the new junior position; it’s also the trend in universities, where contract instructors are taking on more and more of the teaching once performed by tenured faculty. It’s even happening in other unionized workplaces, where collective agreements are being amended to allow for two-tier wage and benefit systems (you can guess who’s in the bottom tier). The situation, in other words, is grim.
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Everyone is pressing you to adapt to the present. But you can not adapt. You can not re-train for a job that might just disappear like the first one you trained for. You can not work for minimum wage when you graduate. You can not mold yourself into the perfect worker so that corporations can escape the cost of training you.

This is all a bit rich, coming from me. Barring catastrophe, there’s a full-time, permanent job awaiting me after my current short-term post is up. But I count myself among those whose duty is to push back on contractualization, precarious work, devalued labour, and market fundamentalism. If you get a good job, good for you. But it will be your duty to ally yourself with the growing legions of young workers who are exploited—and underemployment is exploitation—just because they can be.

Whatever you do, don’t simply figure things out for yourself. If we keep on figuring things out individually, we will never figure things out collectively.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Reich comments on the concerted effort by the U.S.' rich to exacerbate inequality - and points out how it's warped their worldview. And Dean Baker criticizes the spread of inequality by design:

And then there is the financial sector where Mankiw tells us that the extraordinary pay is compensation for the volatility of paychecks. That's interesting, except the vast majority of comparably talented and hardworking people would be happy to get the pay the finance folks get in the bad years. Much of the big money on Wall Street stems from highly leveraged bets that beat the market by seconds or even milliseconds. This provides as much value to the economy as insider trading, which it in fact it resembles closely.

It would be interesting to see what would happen to the big fortunes in the financial sector if it had to pay a small transaction fee, effectively subjecting it to the same sort of sales tax that is paid in almost every other sector of the economy. It would also be interesting to see what would happen to the private equity folks if they lost the opportunity for the tax gaming that is their bread and butter.

I could go on (read my non-copyright protected book on the topic), but the point should be clear. If the 1 percent are able to extract vast sums from the economy it is because we have structured the economy for this purpose. It could easily be structured differently, but the 1 percent and its defenders aren't interested in changing things. And the 1 percent and its defenders have a great deal of influence on the direction of economic policy.

- And Kathleen Raven discusses how children in particular suffer from the spread and entrenchment of poverty and inequality:

Researchers looked at data on 3,142 U.S. counties between 2005 and 2009. They found that rates of child maltreatment ranged widely, from 0.2 percent to 3.1 percent of children.

Using statistical methods to gauge income inequality, they found a steep rise in the rate of child maltreatment with rising inequality. The relationship held after researchers adjusted for poverty itself, and other factors such as the racial and ethnic makeup of regions, education levels and the number of people receiving public assistance income.

Where inequalities are most extreme, communities may become more polarized, with the affluent group influencing where public aid money goes, or what programs are made available in the community, said Dr. Ruth Gilbert, a clinical epidemiologist at University College London in the UK.

"Where the state or federal government is a key provider of services, such as day care and education," Gilbert said, "then you may have situations where poorer children mingle with middle-class kids and this helps create a better understanding between the two classes."

- Unfortunately, the needed end to the Cons' income-splitting scheme seems to have given rise to plenty of talk about how to develop the next-most-destructive option to destroy the federal government's fiscal capacity. Maria Babbage surveys a range of policies from the reasonable (child care and targeted benefits to lower-income parents) to the thoroughly top-weighted (general income tax cuts), while Barrie McKenna has little apparent interest in anything but the latter. And Dennis Howlett notes that there's precious little evidence to suggest a fair tax system is on the Cons' radar.

- Finally, Simon Enoch takes a look at the track record of prison food privatization in the U.S.

On testing principles

It's obviously tempting for opposition parties to turn the recent spate of stories about difference of opinion within the Cons into a simple matter of "they're not united". But it's well worth emphasizing the substance of the issues - and particularly questioning whether the MPs who are challenging their partymates on specific issues are willing to apply the same principles elsewhere.

Most obviously, Jim Flaherty is absolutely right to recognize that income splitting represents a costly and gratuitous giveaway to a few wealthy Canadians which is aimed purely at winning votes rather than serving valid public policy goals. But the same critique applies to many of the boutique tax baubles he's introduced as finance minister.

So in addition to testing whether other Cons share Flaherty's concerns, it's also worth questioning whether Flaherty himself is prepared to apply the same standard to, say, tax-free savings accounts or politically-oriented tax expenditures. And if not, then Flaherty's standard can be applied to demonstrate his (and his party's) general fiscal irresponsibility.

And perhaps even more interesting is Deepak Obhrai's critique of Michael Chong's Reform Act. If Obhrai's experience in seeking a nomination has taught him the dangers of allowing self-interested actors to impose needless restrictions on voting in order to secure their desired outcome, then surely he should oppose the Cons' legislation which creates exactly that problem in general elections.

In both areas, there's a strong case to be made that the perceived dissenters within the Cons have arguments which deserve to be heard on the merits (and indeed which undercut some of the Cons' worst policy positions). And we'd be well served to amplify and further apply those arguments in cases where even their proponents haven't yet commented publicly - rather than implying that there would be no story if a couple of vocal MPs would shut up and get in line.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Star's editorial board sees Canada's woeful job numbers as a signal that it's time for some economic management in the interests of people (rather than artificial manipulation of numbers):

Economists used words like “dismal” and “ugly” for these results, and no wonder. Last year turned out to be the worst year for job growth in Canada since the recession of 2008-2009. And this was just the latest evidence that Canada’s recovery has stalled. The experts are even starting to speculate about a possible cut in interest rates – not the eventual increase that has been predicted for many months based on a gradual strengthening in the economy.

So what’s the Harper government’s response? Nothing. In fact, worse than nothing. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his officials spent most of last week putting out the message that Canadians should expect a stand-pat federal budget with no significant initiatives, no surprises, no new spending and no meaningful tax breaks. In fact, sources were hinting to selected journalists that it might even be delivered the week of Feb. 10 – all the better to bury it amid the distraction of the Sochi Winter Olympics that will be in full swing then.

Flaherty’s sole obsession appears to be making sure that the government erases its deficit by its own self-imposed target of 2015-16.
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For the Harper Conservatives, it’s also nakedly political. They want to go into the 2015 election year with a big budget bang – with the deficit slain and goodies on offer for their chosen electoral constituencies. In the meantime, the unemployment lines in Ontario and elsewhere can just grow longer.

This is a dangerously complacent attitude that will leave more and more people without hope that things can get better – or even a sense that Ottawa takes their plight seriously. Ontarians, in particular, should remember that when it comes time to pass judgment on the Harper government next year.

- Michael Harris discusses Elections Canada's investigation into Julian Fantino's campaign finances. And David Climenhaga follows up on Chuck Strahl's multiple conflicts of interest - while noting that what's kept barely legal through loopholes in the Cons' system of ethics has little to do with what's right.

- Jessica Barrett reports that Lisa Raitt considers lax rail safety (and the occasional town blown to smithereens) to be more than sexy enough to be worth defending. And Tim Harper discusses why Neil Young's words (and actions) to address the tar sands deserve our attention.

- Finally, Robert Frank writes about the vicious cycle of inequality:

Income concentration has changed spending patterns in other ways that widen the income gap. The wealthy have been spending more on gifts, clothing, housing, celebrations and other things simply because they have more money. Their extra spending has shifted the frames of reference that shape demand by others just below them, so these less wealthy people have been spending more, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. But because incomes below the top have been stagnant, the resulting expenditure cascades have made it harder for middle- and low-income families to make ends meet. Despite taking on huge amounts of debt, they’ve been unable to keep pace with community standards. Interest payments impoverish them while enriching their wealthy creditors.

But perhaps the most important new feedback loop shows up in higher education. Tighter budgets in middle-class families make it harder for them to afford the special tutors and other environmental advantages that help more affluent students win admission to elite universities. Financial aid helps alleviate these problems, but the children of affluent families graduate debt-free and move quickly into top-paying jobs, while the children of other families face lesser job prospects and heavy loads of student debt. All too often, the less affluent experience the miracle of compound interest in reverse.

On consistent preferences

Stephen Gordon (among others) took the time to point out that Jim Flaherty's attacks on the Bank of Canada are both unwise in general, and wrong in terms of economic theory. But even setting aside those critiques, the mot important message to be taken from Flaherty is that he's once again seeking to benefit the rentier class at the expense of workers - signalling that he'll happily trade off a decline in employment for higher returns on capital.

Of course, that was a dubious enough set of priorities at the best of times last weekend. But this week's added news that the Cons are failing miserably on the jobs front already only emphasizes the need for a stronger public policy focus on making better employment available to Canadians. And the more the Cons make clear that they're once again determined to make matters worse, the more obvious it'll be who bears the blame when Flaherty's influence on fiscal and monetary policy alike have their predictable effect.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Don Lenihan is the latest to highlight the difference between citizens and consumers - as well as why we should want to act as the former:

In the old view, public debate is all about defining the public interest by establishing collective needs. This requires a very different view of public debate. Rather than seeing it as a chance to advance my wants, it asks me, as a citizen, to consider the needs of the community. This means I must listen to others, weigh their claims, examine the evidence, and make trade-offs and compromises.

When Delacourt talks about citizens having once had a sense of the common good or being willing to make sacrifices for it, we don’t need to believe there was once a golden age of civic participation to agree with her.

The real point is that, not so long ago, citizens had a much clearer sense of their responsibility—as citizens—to balance their personal wants against the public good. Rob Ford’s proclivity to treat citizens first and foremost as taxpayers—and Ford Nation’s inclination to respond—shows just how far we have strayed from this vision.

- Andrew Leach offers his take on what the National Energy Board's rubber-stamping of Northern Gateway means. And Stephen Hume points out the absurdity of the Cons' carefully-scripted process.

- Meanwhile, having managed to eliminate environmental considerations from the Gateway's environmental review process, Stephen Harper has once again kicked any possible greenhouse gas emission regulations past the next federal election. That may break the streak of consecutive "next year!" promises before it reaches an even ten - but it also seems to leave no room for any pretense that a Con government will ever regulate the oil sector.

- Andrew Jackson calls out the Cons' doublespeak on the affordability of a secure pension system. And John Geddes identifies Stephen Harper's pension rhetoric as yet another example of the Cons' beggar-thy-neighbour, every-man-for-himself philosophy.

- Finally, CAUT finds that a strong majority of Canadians both support and recognize the need for unions - while only the predictable 28% would rather see unions and workers silenced.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ed Broadbent comments on Parliament's review of inequality in Canada:

In a more encouraging vein, the majority report cautiously endorses some positive proposals. Given stated support from both of the opposition parties, these could, and should, move to the top of the government agenda as we approach the 2014 federal Budget and the 2015 federal election.

The Broadbent Institute and other witnesses highlighted the need to increase the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) which supplements the incomes of working poor families, thus raising earned income from low wage jobs and helping offset unnecessary barriers to moving from welfare to work.

The majority report calls on the federal government to “formally review the WITB to determine how it could be expanded or modified to further benefit Canadians.”

The majority report, again accompanied by stronger statements from the opposition parties, further calls on the federal government “to make early childhood education and child care more accessible and affordable in all areas of the country, including through increased support for affordable early childhood and education and care programs.”

Such programs are key to removing barriers to work by single parents, mainly women, and are also important to expanding lifetime opportunities for low income children. However, the key question to ask of the Conservatives is whether they are actually prepared to fund income supports for the working poor and early childhood programs. After all, their stated priorities, following elimination of the deficit, are to cut income taxes by introducing family income splitting and by raising contribution limits for Tax Free Savings Accounts.

- Meanwhile, Martin Regg Cohn notes that Jim Flaherty is standing in the way of a secure retirement for a substantial number of Canadians while being able to look forward to multiple political pensions himself.  And Lawrence Martin looks at Peter Kent's brief stay as a Harper cabinet member - but finds that Kent himself is far more critical of the media than of the government which ignored his own recommendations.

- Dene Moore reports on the imminent release of the NEB's Northern Gateway review. But I'll offer a reminder of the reality which has largely been edited out of coverage of the NEB's hearings: rather than representing a "yea or nay" evaluation, the entire process was set up by the Cons to prohibit a "nay" conclusion.

- Frances Russell discusses the spread of low-paying work in the service sector - with a particular focus on how some employers are going out of their way to force workers to work multiple McJobs rather than receiving overtime or benefits through a single workplace.

- Finally, Heather Mallick points out the importance of tax revenue to build a functional society:

I am a tax eccentric. I like taxes and frequently rejoice at what they give me: highways, air traffic control, emergency rooms, the tracking of the emerald ash borer, abortion rights, traffic lights, schools, food safety, the RCMP’s terrific boots, policing, regulating, licensing, autopsies, compassion, all the things that make us an organized and rational nation that is a pleasure to live in. I don’t trip over small corpses on the way home. It’s rather nice.

Conservatives, on the other hand, enjoy these services while abusing taxes as the necrotizing flesh disease of Canadian life.
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(T)axing is more complicated than that, as essayist Jim Stanford says. “Governments decide, in the context of the conflicting and contradictory political pressures they face, what programs they will provide. Then they figure out how to fund those programs.”

Neo-liberals cut taxes first, Stanford says, while the programs exist, thus creating a deficit that is used to justify further cuts. We are manipulated. For example, we are told that we can’t afford pensions. Neither can we raise payroll taxes to raise CPP benefits for the future.

But we can pay them if we choose to.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Tieleman tears into James Moore for his callous disregard for child hunger, while PressProgress reminds us that plenty of the Cons' policy choices reflect Moore's complete lack of concern for his neighbours' children. And Polly Toynbee looks in detail at the UK Cons' attempts to turn support for needy children into a perceived political weakness rather than a matter of basic empathy and compassion:

The dirty war has begun; the early signs are that this will be the most poisonous, socially damaging election campaign for many a long year. Corrosive malice will be poured over anyone on any benefit. The Conservatives are convinced they are laying a killer trap by branding Labour as "the welfare party".
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The language used by Zahawi captures a swelling theme of the election – dividing the "taxpayer" from the "benefit taker" – with this: "Many couples take the decision to delay having a third or fourth child until they are sure they can afford it." The comments that followed were heavily anti-child: "If you can't afford kids why expect the state to keep them?" and "It's a parent's responsibility to provide, not the government". There lies the great dividing line: why should the state support children at all?

As the Child Poverty Action Group eloquently argues, benefits for children not only spread the cost of living between richer and poorer, but also smooth the bumps in everyone's life cycle. When children are born costs are highest and earnings meagre, but later many will earn more, pay more tax and get less out. The banal moral truth is that children are the future, paying for the care of the childless. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this government's legacy will be a steep rise in child poverty by 2015: a monumental £12bn benefit cut is in George Osborne's post-2015 plan.
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Cameron bets the screw can be turned twice as hard, as Osborne enters the election with huge cuts to meet his impossible deficit targets. Labour has no intention of matching his plan. The only way to avoid the Tory "trap" is to tell the truth of where incomes are heading, how child poverty is soaring. Rachel Reeves lays out her policy for the first time in January. Ed Miliband has already said he'd shrink the housing benefit bill by building homes, and the dole with guaranteed jobs for the unemployed and a living wage to ease the cost of tax credits. Labour can never out-nasty the Tories, so nice is the only way to be.

- Elizabeth Benzetti highlights the absurdity of wealthy and privileged scions of the right like Conrad Black and Rob Ford putting on a "woe is us!" routine while calling for life to be worse for mere ordinary citizens. And Andrew Coyne similarly laments the infantilism and lack of principle which form the basis of the right in Canada - though he's too quick to try to distance that impulse from conservative politics.

- Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the state of minimum wage laws in Canada - with not a single jurisdiction providing for the minimum wage above the poverty line. Andrew Jackson takes a look at the composition of Canada's workforce and notes that a majority of workers may have trouble reaching what would generally be seen as a middle class lifestyle. And the Globe and Mail rightly slams Jim Flaherty for positioning himself as the primary obstacle barring the way to a sufficient Canada Pension Plan.

- David McLaren comments on the Cons' decision to restore a colonial philosophy to Canada's foreign policy. And John Baird's spin on the Cons' international priorities is accurate only to the extent that their sole concern is with profits rather than jobs.

- Finally, Sandra Azocar and Noel Somerville take a look at Alberta's experience to make the case against for-profit seniors care:

The inconvenient reality is that, because of acute staff shortages, seniors are not being fed properly and medications are not being administered properly.

The magnitude of the current staffing problem has been well documented in a recent study done by the Parkland Institute. This study, entitled From Bad to Worse — Residential Elder Care in Alberta, demonstrates the deterioration that has occurred in Alberta from 1999 to 2009.

The Parkland study quantifies the differences in care provided in public, not-for-profit and private for-profit facilities. The hours of care per patient in not-for-profit facilities was 83 per cent of that provided in publicly operated facilities. The hours of care per patient in private for-profit facilities was only 71 per cent of that provided in the publicly operated facilities.
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(T)he availability of long-term care beds in Alberta, relative to the age 75-plus population, has slipped by 20 per cent and is now the second lowest of any Canadian province. This decline is on top of the 40 per cent cut in long-term care beds per capita that occurred in the 1990s. Further, over the study period, the number of assisted living beds which provide much lower level of care, has grown by 187 per cent.

All of these realities suggest that the government is pursuing a continuing care strategy that serves to divest itself of responsibility for providing care to seniors. When it comes to expanding seniors care in this province, this government has opted to give massive public handouts primarily to corporations seeking to profit from the health needs of seniors.

Ironically, Premier Alison Redford won the Tory leadership race in large part by claiming to be devoted to our public health-care system. Yet this government continues its ideologically driven efforts to shift costs and responsibility from the government to individual health care users and to promote increased private-sector participation. Sadly, this is why we are now more than ever hearing heartbreaking stories from seniors and their families that attest to the shabby state of elderly care in our province.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Nick Pearce offers an interesting discussion of conception of equality that should be placed at the core of social-democratic thinking - with one goal in particular standing out as demanding further attention:

(S)social democrats would be more self-consciously political in pursuit of their goals, eschewing some (if not all) of the preference for legally-enshrined social policy targets that characterised the New Labour project. Instead, greater weight would be placed on building durable coalitions of support for political ambitions, widening the ground on which to advance their policies and drawing energy from new social movements. Driven by ideological rethinking and future fiscal limits towards a so-called ‘pre-distribution’ agenda, Labour is already opening up – albeit tentatively – new territory in economic policy for fresh ideas and practical coalitions. It should extend that logic more widely into social policy and political reform, thinking through how it can gain the popular support it currently lacks for tackling poverty, reforming the welfare state, and creating more integrated communities. In each of these areas, it has to find ways of converting political weakness into strength, anchoring its ambitions in new institutions, identities and practices, and in political alliances that are oriented towards the future, not given to defence of the crumbling bastions of the past.

- Meanwhile, Ian Welsh's post on how to properly define an economy offers some hints as to the types of institutions and movements which might form key parts of a progressive coalition. But the Cons are going out of their way to show they value an "economy" measured solely in terms of profit and GDP rather than the needs of Canadians.

- Yves Engler writes that CETA is best seen as attacking democratic decision-making for the benefit of monopolist rent-seekers, while Stuart Trew wonders whether the Harper Cons are legally required to make the deal public (notwithstanding their obvious preference to keep it hidden). And David Martin notes a similar corporatist bent in an impending deal between the US and the EU.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail's interactive discussion of inequality in Canada is well worth a look. But I do note that the proposed solutions are rather limited in scope - with a basic annual income for everybody (as distinct from benefits for the working poor and/or workers in precarious jobs) left off the table altogether.

Fool me twice

Andrew Coyne has a suggestion as to how the Cons might extort some increased adherence to free-market fundamentalism from the provinces:

It’s the balance between spending and revenues, not just the totals, that matters. The federal government, as the PBO numbers show, will have substantial fiscal “room,” revenues in excess of what it needs to pay its bills, while the provinces will be in substantial structural deficit. Ottawa has the money, in other words, and the provinces need it — desperately.

This puts the feds in a very strong bargaining position. Rather than simply hand over the loot, as the provinces will inevitably demand, they can use it as leverage: a transfer of x number of GST points, say, in exchange for dismantling provincial trade barriers.

Ottawa will have the fiscal clout to bring some order at last to this chaotic economic union. It should begin thinking how to use it.

Of course, the first problem with Coyne's pretense to compromise is the fact that both proposed actions in fact represent hard-right steps: tax cuts and the elimination of regulations don't reflect a tradeoff, but a complete capitulation to the corporate agenda on the part of provincial governments who may not entirely agree with it.

And the "tax room" theory serves only to exacerbate inequality among the provinces - replacing fiscal federalism which provides stability for all provinces with a go-it-alone philosophy.

But let's put those general problems aside in favour of a more specific reality about the Cons' posturing around tax points. Because the Cons have made exactly the same promise of offering provinces tax room before - and then used any effort to follow up as an opportunity to bash the provincial governments in question.

Again, here's how Jim Flaherty first presented the Cons' GST cuts:

Our government firmly believes that unanticipated surpluses, the last area I wanted to mention, should be used primarily to reduce the debt and reduce federal taxes rather than to launch new policies in areas where the federal government is not best placed to design or deliver programs.

This, in turn, creates tax room that provinces and territories can consider filling for their specific needs and purposes.

So what happened when Ontario tried to take Flaherty up on the offer in order to fund public transit?

“We did not lower the GST to have it taken away from Ontarians by the Wynne government with a new sales tax hike,” said Flaherty, who cut the federal levy from 7 per cent to 5 per cent prior to harmonization.

In sum, any provincial leader would have to be painfully gullible to think that the Cons will let further federal tax slashing open the door to provincial revenue gathering. And so if the provinces have any desire to be able to deliver programs for the public benefit, their ask needs to be for direct funding - lest their bargaining position get all the worse with time.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your weekend.

- Dave Coles introduces readers to the Cons' latest attack on labour - with a backbencher's private member's bill again serving as an excuse to introduce unprecedent restrictions on union organization.

- Michael Harris suspects that the Cons' attempt to delay any public review of their burgeoning Senate slush fund scandal by a referral to the Auditor General is doomed to fail. And Karl Nerenberg discusses exactly what the slush fund means - including the holes it highlights in Canada's party financing system.

- Martin Regg Cohn rightly calls out Jim Flaherty for once again trying to use a federal cabinet post to bully Ontario's provincial government. But it's also worth noting that in addition to misrepresenting the type of policy under consideration in Ontario, Flaherty is also being dishonest about the rationale used to sell his own party's tax cuts - which included generating tax room to be available for additional provincial revenue:

Our government firmly believes that unanticipated surpluses, the last area I wanted to mention, should be used primarily to reduce the debt and reduce federal taxes rather than to launch new policies in areas where the federal government is not best placed to design or deliver programs.

This, in turn, creates tax room that provinces and territories can consider filling for their specific needs and purposes. It supports the premise that governments need to be accountable to Canadians for their taxing and spending decisions. That clarity of roles and responsibilities is essential by ensuring that Canadians can hold governments accountable for their actions.

- Michael Geist discusses his appearance in front of the Standing Committee on International Trade to discuss the most dangerous elements of the TPP - as well as the secrecy surrounding its negotiations:

(I)t is deeply troubling that DFAIT has established a secret insider group with some companies and industry associations granted access to consultations as well as opportunities to learn more about the agreement and Canada's negotiating position.

I realize that Minister Fast denied the existence of such a group when he appeared before you last month.  However, documents I obtained under the Access to Information Act indicate that the first secret industry consultation occurred weeks before Canada was formally included in the TPP negotiations in a November 2012 consultation with telecommunications providers. All participants were required to sign non-disclosure agreements.  

Soon after, the circle of insiders expanded with the formation of a TPP Consultation Group. Representatives from groups and companies such as Bombardier, the Canadian Manufactures and Exporters, Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, and the Canadian Steel Producers Association all signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement that granted access to "certain sensitive information of the Department concerning or related to the TPP negotiations."

I have copies of the signed NDAs here that make specific reference to the TPP Consultation Group.

The creation of a secret TPP insider group suggests an attempt to shy away from public consultation and scrutiny of an agreement that could have a transformative effect on dozens of sectors at a time when we should be increasing efforts to gain public confidence in the talks by adopting a more transparent and accountable approach. I believe the TPP's highly secretive and non-transparent approach runs counter to Canadian values of openness and accountability. We should be actively encouraging participants to increase TPP transparency and should lead by example by ceasing the two-tier insider approach to trade agreement information. 

- Finally, Will Hutton discusses why tolerance is of limited value without some associated commitment to human dignity:

Tolerance of other people's differences is a core element of a liberal order, but a good society is one where we go beyond just shrugging our shoulders at someone's sexual preferences, religious beliefs or ethnicity. It is one in which we engage with each other, create law and justice as a moral system enshrining human dignity and accept mutual responsibilities. The aim is to live with dignity, to be able to make the best of one's capabilities and to expect that the consequences of undeserved bad luck – what Dworkin called brute bad luck – would be compensated by society in a mutual compact. This is a million miles from the Economist's arid conception of liberalism.

Nor are these disputes just airy-fairy differences between intellectuals – they go to the heart of how we live, what we do and say. Unless we take a much more robust and rounded view of liberalism, tolerance ends up as indifference, disengagement and refusal to respect other people's ambition to live with dignity. Anything goes...

In successive areas of public policy – "reform" of criminal justice and legal aid, the health service, climate change, employment law, social security – the debate is similarly defined wholly in terms of the need to assert individual rights and choice, to minimise social and public responsibilities and, above all, to roll back taxes. If the facts or scientific evidence do not support this drive, then the facts are changed or the science ignored.
...
(I)if the right is dominant, a rounded liberalism has one advantage. The right's world leads to economic stagnation, social atomisation and a destructive nationalism. Nor, ultimately, is there happiness and dignity to be found by living as a tax-avoiding, climate-change-denying anti-feminist while mouthing how tolerant you are. There is a quiet and mounting crisis in conservatism. Liberalism, in its best sense, could capitalise on the opportunity. It is a pity Ronnie Dworkin won't be around to be part of the fight back. We'll just have to do it by ourselves.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Public Interest Alberta takes a closer look at that province's rhetoric about taxes, and finds that in fact most Albertans pay more income tax than they would under the more fair and progressive systems applied in other province:

“Albertans who believe the myth that we pay the lowest taxes in Canada will be surprised to see that they are paying more income tax than if they lived in BC or Ontario. At the same time, people in Alberta with very high incomes are paying tens of thousands less in income tax than in other parts of Canada,” said Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta.

An Albertan with a taxable income of $1 million will pay $41,095 less than if they lived in BC and $75,157 less than if they lived in Ontario. However, an Albertan with a taxable income of $70,000 will pay $1434 more than if they lived in BC and $919 more than if they lived in Ontario.

- Andrew Jackson rebuts a few of the zombie arguments against higher minimum wages. And Scott Clark and Peter DeVries highlight not only why there's ample reason for concern about the federal budget, but also why Jim Flaherty's obsession with austerity and naive faith in the confidence fairy may cause yet more economic problems in the years to come.

- Meanwhile, Chantal Hebert wonders whether the Cons' move to claw back billions of dollars for EI training will lead to a backlash from the provinces involved. And that's doubly so given the question of whether the Cons' purpose has anything at all to do with achieving results, or whether it's simply a matter of wanting to be able to engage in another round of gratuitous self-promotion.

- Geoffrey Stevens and the Macleans editorial board both make the case that it's time to take a serious look at abolishing the Senate.

- Finally, Frances Russell contrasts Preston Manning's one-time concern with building a party and a movement which would be broadly acceptable to the Canadian public against his current embrace of Ron Paul and other dubious figures.

Friday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Lawrence Martin questions the media's obsession with fabricating stories out of imagined motivations and insignificant shifts in poll numbers:

In the year before an election, the media’s heavy focus on tiny political twists and turns is understandable. Here in Canada, a federal campaign is likely a long way off, the Conservatives’ numbers are stable and so are those of the NDP. But it doesn’t prevent the rash of pollster and media speculation about who is up and who is down and who might be headed in either direction.

A headline the other day announced that the Conservatives were benefitting from an NDP slide. The story went on to say that the Tories were at 35 per cent. This was a one per cent gain since last October. The NDP, meanwhile, was at 29 per cent — a decline of two percentage points. No matter. It was enough for a big headline making it sound like something significant was happening.

Yeah, right. A whopping one point gain for one, a catastrophic two point fall for another.

This relentless reading of the tea leaves is getting out of control. Maybe it’s time we declared a moratorium on political-impact stories. Just for a couple of days. What a refreshing change that would be.

- Meanwhile, Chris Selley rightly argues that no opposition party should be taking a coalition off the table as a possible outcome following the next federal election:

It’s not that a coalition is likely — though it’s far more likely than the plan Mr. Coyne proposes — or desirable. But why make this so complicated? We know from recent experience that when power is either offered or threatened, any party in the House of Commons will cooperate with just about any other. If any of their leaders denies that, he’s a liar or a fool. This is the way parliamentary democracies are supposed to work. I’m sticking with my own crazy plan: The Liberals, New Democrats try to win their own majorities, do not rule out cooperation should this not occur, and forge off bravely into the future.

- Iglika Ivanova and Seth Klein offer some progressive tax suggestions for British Columbia. And Toby Sanger answers the corporatist right's outrage that anybody might discuss perpetually-increasing income inequality:

The Globe also weighed in with an editorial urging us to “Hug the 1 per cent“ claiming they get a bad rap and that they are a net benefit to Canada because they pay more than their share in income taxes. The Globe editorialists forgot about the other taxes Canadians pay.  When all those other taxes (sales, payroll, property) are considered, the top 1 per cent actually pay a lower share of their income in taxes than all other income groups, including the poorest 10 per cent, as the CCPA’s comprehensive analysis demonstrated.

Another notable reaction was that the income of the top 1 per cent, with a median of $283,400, isn’t that high. (Of course, that raises the question: if $283K isn’t that high, how low does that mean the median of $28K for the 99% is?).  If anything Statistics Canada downplayed the incomes of the top 1 per cent and our growing income gap. For instance, the average mean (as opposed to median) income of the top 1 per cent was actually $429,600 in 2010. The real incomes of the top 1 per cent almost doubled (up by 96%) in the 25 years from $251,250 in 1982 to $492,900 in 2007 (in 2010$).
Meanwhile the average real income of the bottom 90% increased by only 5% over this quarter decade from $27,600 in 1982 to $29,300 in 2010.
...
The drop in average taxes paid by the top 1 per cent wasn’t because of a cut in the top federal marginal income tax rate, which has been 29% since 1988, but was caused both by an expansion of tax loopholes (with lower rates on capital gains and stock options) and by provincial cuts to top income tax rates, such as Alberta’s shift to a 10% flat tax rate.

And in these times of continuing fiscal concern, these are the some ways we can regain these revenues: by closing tax loopholes and raising provincial top income tax rates. And if the top 1 per cent paid their fair share of tax, they might get a little more love from the rest of us.

- And finally, Scott Clark and Peter DeVries explain why Canada's real economic issues have little to do with deficits, and everything to do with the complete lack of a sustainable economic vision from the Cons.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Murray Dobbin writes about the significance of Idle No More as a shift away from the presumption that First Nations' interests are represented solely by elected officials:

There are some fascinating similarities between the Idle No More phenomenon and the Occupy movement. Both reflect a political dualism: they are focused on the lack of democracy, justice and equality for ordinary people and they are implicitly (and with Idle No More explicitly) telling conventional movement organizations that are supposed to speak for them that they have failed. And it should come as no surprise that most members of the leadership of Idle No More are women.

By the late 1980s government funding had established a mutually beneficial relationship between governments and aboriginal leaders. Into this status quo of continued poverty came native women's organizations which were genuinely radical (they had no big salaries to lose) and often critical of the totally male dominated aboriginal groups. They were the voices of aboriginal communities -- but lack of resources and bullying by the government-funded "official" organizations eventually prevailed. That they are back in leadership roles is one of the most important and positive aspects of the movement.

Idle No More is the most exciting development in aboriginal politics in two generations. It has rightfully scared the hell out of the entire First Nations leadership -- from Shawn Atleo down to the hundreds of chiefs, too many of whom do in fact live high on the hog while their band members suffer. And it has got the attention of Stephen Harper, a man who has dedicated his political career to the interests of the oil and other resource industries threatened by Idle No More. Remember that he cancelled the Kelowna Accord soon after he became prime minister. The only reason Harper met with First Nations leaders is because his intelligence gathering told him this could be real trouble. Let's hope it is.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry interviews Romeo Saganash about his own path toward federal politics:

I had a mission in life and that was to help building bridges between my people and the rest of Quebec and Canadian society. My whole purpose was that over the last 30 years. When Jack first approached me in 2006 to run for the NDP, there was still a lot of unfinished business with the Cree at that time, so I preferred to continue to work with the Cree until 2011 when I thought was the timing was great for me. The campaign slogan was travaillons ensemble and that was me over the years.

The intent at that time was for me to run in Quebec City. I had worked from Quebec City for the grand council, my work base was in Quebec City and I had been there for 20 years, so I knew practically everybody in Quebec City. But Jack, and that was probably the only thing that he refused from me, said to me, no, my friend, you’re going back home. And I always loved the way that he explained his refusal to me. He said, look at this way: all of the challenges, the global challenges that we have today, the environment, climate change, relations with aboriginal peoples, the future of aboriginal peoples, resource development, the future of the north, the new geopolitical realities of the Arctic, you name them, they’re all in that riding. And he said, who better than you can represent that riding? And in a sense I’d never thought about it, because it’s so diverse in terms of population. There are Cree in my riding, there are Inuit in my riding, there are Algonquins in my riding, there are forestry workers in my riding, there are mining workers in my riding. More than half the province gets its electricity from that territory. It’s a huge riding, it’s the second largest in the country. And I know the riding very well. It’s a riding where the James Bay-Northern Quebec agreement, first model treaty, applies as well, more than half of the riding is covered by this constitutional arrangement. And I know that treaty very, very well. And I think Jack was right. And I’m certainly glad that he insisted.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on the continued investigation against Dean Del Mastro's 2008 campaign for breaking Canadian electoral law. And Jim Bronskill points out Jim Flaherty's misuse of his ministerial title and resources to try to influence CRTC licensing decisions.

- Finally, Michael Geist discusses how the Cons' anti-spam legislation remains in limbo after being passed years ago - and has given way to pro-spam regulations at the behest of businesses who don't want to have to justify loading up Canadians' inboxes with unwanted ads.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom discusses the meaning of the Ontario Libs' attempt to take collective bargaining rights away from teachers in the context of the wider labour movement:

The union movement is one of the last remnants of the great postwar pact between labour, capital and government.

That pact provided Canadians with things they still value, from medicare to public pension plans. Good wages in union shops kept pay high, even in workplaces that weren’t organized. Unions agitated for and won better health and safety laws that covered all.

True, union rules made it more difficult for employers to axe slackers. But they also ensured that when someone lost his job, it was for real cause — not because he or she had refused to sleep with the boss.

Some employers were content with all of this. Many were not and, as their profits came under pressure, demanded what they called greater flexibility — in wages, work practices and hiring.

Over the past 30 years, most Canadian governments have devoted themselves to eliminating anything that interferes with this flexibility.

So think of this latest foray against teachers as part of a package...

How can employees be encouraged to accept the discipline of this new world when they see some, such as teachers and other public sector workers, still making good wages?

The former Tory government of Mike Harris certainly tried to solve this problem and bring the teachers’ unions to heel. At one point it outlawed work-to-rule tactics and made it mandatory for teachers to coach sports after school. But in the end the Tories backed down.

Now it’s the Liberals’ turn. This government has given itself the power to set teachers’ wages and working conditions arbitrarily. It calculates that most voters will be envious enough of teachers that they will support its plans. It may be right.

- It's long past time for Stephen Harper's contempt for the provinces and social institutions alike to lead to some sustained backlash. And Robert Ghiz' comment about Harper sabotaging health-care talks looks like an important step in that direction.

- Meanwhile, Craig McInnes picks up on an obvious problem with the Cons' CPP obfuscation and delay tactics - as the longer we wait to implement a system which actually provides for a secure retirement, the higher the cost will be for the people working once a policy change is implemented.

- pogge notes that the rest of the world is well aware of Canada's turn for the worse under the Harper Cons - with a failing grade on human rights from Amnesty International serving as the most recent example.

- Finally, Andrew Potter's distinction between naive and cynical politics is well worth a read. But I'm not sure the proposed division actually represents much of a change from at least some conceptions of left/right politics: is there any meaningful difference between Potter's terminology and, say, George Lakoff's "nurturant/strict parent" model which includes more clear ideological content?

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Bill Curry reports on Jim Flaherty's arbitrary choice to declare that Canadians can't have any more CPP retirement security than the most callous provincial government in the country is willing to grant them. And Martin Regg Cohn rightly responds that our reaction should be to pressure Flaherty to instead look out for the interests of retirees present and future:

The real scandal is that, after two years of delay, concrete reforms are finally within reach. Yet Flaherty seems determined to sabotage the process.

A 30-page discussion paper obtained by the Star lays out a clear path for affordable action. Prepared by federal officials after a year of painstaking consultations with their provincial counterparts, the document is remarkably clear-minded:

Canada can, in fact, afford to shore up its disappearing pension system. A “modest” expansion of the solid but paltry Canada Pension Plan could plug the gaping holes in our outdated retirement security framework, the document shows. Ottawa and the provinces are well positioned to boost the CPP because current retirement payroll costs are far lower than in other industrialized countries — yes, including the U.S.

Most Canadians probably don’t realize the CPP pays only 25 per cent of the average industrial wage (currently about $50,000) — capping pension payments at a mere $12,500 a year. For the vast majority who lack private pensions, and who have not saved adequately, the gap is growing.
...
Instead of limiting CPP payouts to $12,500 a year currently, middle class Canadians could effectively double their annual pension down the road — virtually wiping out the shortfall in savings.

This could be achieved with a relatively modest increase in premiums of about $1,000 a year for the highest-paid employees (employers would pay half of the cost through payroll taxes), or about $540 a year (cost-shared with employers) for workers earning about $50,000 a year.
...
Cynically, Flaherty is now insisting on unanimity amongst the provinces for any CPP reforms (the actual requirement is only two-thirds of the provinces representing two-thirds of Canada’s population). That leaves Alberta with an effective veto, given its traditional resistance to reform.

After two-and-a-half years of huffing and puffing and procrastinating, it’s time for Flaherty, always with his elbows up, to stop ragging the puck and passing the buck. It’s also time for the provinces — and working Canadians — to put him on the spot.

- Mark Sumner discusses how the corporate sector's interests conflict with those of mere people - and why we thus shouldn't assume that policies aimed at boosting corporate profits actually have any social value:

(I)n Washington,...the wealthy have been able to use their accumulated power to see that the system encourages rather than corrects, the increasingly out of balance system. Because of this, thirty years of supply side economics has done more damage to our nation than every socialist, communist, or anarchist who ever lived. It's done what none of them could ever do. It's brought capitalism to the brink of failure.

That's where we are, on the brink. The wealthy have made a meal of the nation's economy. They've raided the larder. They've devoured the seed crop. Now they are searching for crumbs.

Take housing. The collapse brought on by speculative trading of mortgage derivatives left many Americans unable to afford their homes and flooded the market with foreclosures. However, in many of those areas where the foreclosures were most common, would-be home buyers have observed a strange phenomenon. Despite what should be a glut of houses on the market, prices on the homes actually put up for sale remain high. Real estate agents in many of the same markets complain that they are actually seeing a shortage of homes greater than when home sales were at their highest. Also, banks are forcing homebuyers to jump so many hurdles in the name of security, that they are often unable to make an offer in time to win a home. As a result, many Americans who are employed and have good credit, are still not able to find a house after months or years of searching. That might not be what you would expect from a perusal of classic economics texts, but it is what you would expect in our current system.

How can this be possible? It's possible because the same banks that homeowners must depend on to secure a loan are in direct competition with them. Hedge fund managers in the investment arms of banks are snatching up homes indiscriminately, buying them in bulk lots that swallow up potential homes by the hundreds and simply take them off the market. Why do this? Because, as institutions empowered to make money through almost any form of speculation, investment banks can optimize the availability of homes to maximize what they can bring in from rentals, sales, and long term holding. Not selling you a home is often a better bet. Bulk buys of homes allow banks to manipulate the housing market to their benefit across whole cities for a span of years. Why should they do anything else? It's not as if there's a barrier in place to separate banks that provide loans from banks that create speculative instruments. We took care of that.

What's happening with banks is just a part of the wealth shift that's taken place over the last thirty years. A shift that's allowed a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population to control so much capital, that this financial black hole stands a very good chance of simply ripping the system apart.

It's a monopoly on everything.

In this monopoly, you have nothing that they want. You own nothing that they value. You make nothing they desire. Your knowledge, your experience, your willingness to work... mean nothing. There are cheaper hands available. They see no issue with holding out until you give up on a decent wage, on decent working conditions, on a decent life. You want financial institutions to think long term? They are. They're thinking that, long term, you'll give them anything they want in exchange for almost nothing at all.

- But there are still promising signs of resistance to that perpetual corporate overreach. And Doug Cuthand's column on the Idle No More movement points to one example which could significantly shape Canada's future at a time when some of the best checks on a Con majority determined to run roughshod over anybody outside the resource sector may come from First Nations' consultation rights.

- Finally, Bruce Stewart suggests that if the Cons wanted to feign the slightest interest in their own accountability, some consequences for ministerial incompetence might be an important start.

On lemmings

No, we shouldn't be surprised that Jim Flaherty is lending the weight of Canada's federal government to a concerted effort to attack U.S. social programs. But for those who may have missed it, the supposed "fiscal cliff" being used as an excuse to push a lame-duck Congress to cut long-term benefits is rather less urgent than advertised.

Here's Matt Yglesias on why the "cliff" metaphor is utterly misplaced:

A salient fact about non-metaphorical cliffs is that falling over them is generally irreversible. If the cliff is high enough that falling off of it would kill you, then if you fall off you're going to die and that's the end of it. The "fiscal cliff" by contrast isn't like that at all.

Rather, it's a set of policy changes—mostly tax hikes plus some steep spending cuts—that if they were all locked into place would constitute a significant drag on economic growth over the course of a year. But if the Bush tax cuts fully expire on a Tuesday morning it's not as if some catastrophe strikes on Wednesday where suddenly middle class families have no money. It's true that if the new higher rates were to be locked in, then the medium-term drag on middle class take home pay would delay the deleveraging cycle and damage the recovery. But to resolve that, all you need to do is introduce a new package of middle class tax cuts on Wednesday afternoon, have congress pass it on Thursday, and then the president signs it on Friday. The fact that taxes were higher for three days—or even three weeks—is simply not that consequential.

Obviously to the extent that higher middle class taxes is bad, one day of them is worse than zero days and three days is worse than one day. But it's a deeply banal situation. There's no particularly large virtue to "averting" the fiscal cliff on Day N-3 versus "going over the fiscal cliff" and then fixing it in retrospect on Day N+3. If "going over the cliff" gives the White House leverage to lock a better medium-term fiscal policy in place, then going over the cliff is a no brainer. Because there is no cliff.

And likewise, Suzy Khimm points out that the primary significance of the January deadline is that it will temporarily withdraw some stimulus from the U.S. economy - meaning that there's no reason whatsoever to allow Republicans to hold long-term social spending hostage or insist that wealthy Americans pay disproportionately low taxes as the price of agreement.

As Yglesias notes, some sort of deal will eventually be needed to avoid having longer-term effects take hold. (And there may well be more reason for optimism now than in the last couple of Republican efforts at crisis-making, as at least nobody can point to limiting Barack Obama's time in office as a basis for courting disaster.)

But we should be highly skeptical of Flaherty and anybody else focusing primarily on an immediate deal rather than a reasonable one - lest we otherwise encourage the Republicans to herd the U.S. toward real dangers.

[Edit: Fixed formatting.]

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Heather Scoffield reports on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing's stunning finding that Canadian quality of life declined by a quarter between 2008 and 2010, while the Vancouver Sun and Lindor Reynolds comment on the collapse in well-being far beyond the economic damage of the recent recession. And Jane Gleeson-White puts the need for such measures of well-being into a global context:

GDP is a partial and misleading measure of national wealth and wellbeing. The problem is that it does not measure key goods in our economy, those unpriced but priceless services carried out by domestic workers and by nature – for example, the coastal defence of coral reefs, the pollution-filtering of wetlands, the nutrient recycling done by the soil and the unpaid work we do in our homes.

And yet GDP does include bad elements such as pollution, crime, cigarettes and their related health costs and environmental disasters, which boost GDP and so generate economic growth.
...
Under current GDP measures, countries that cut down forests for timber exports, dynamite their reefs for fish, pollute and degrade their soil for intensive agriculture and allow farms and factories to contaminate their waterways get rich.

The services provided by nature and households are not included in GDP because we consider their work to be free. But these services are not free – and we are beginning to pay their hidden costs in environmental destruction and climate change.

- Meanwhile, the Cons continue to work more on illusions than reality - as John Geddes discusses the millions of public dollars being spent to bolster Conservative branding and gloss over the gross failures that have led to our decline in well-being:

These are not supposed to be political ads. They feature no Conservative politicians. Still, they hardly feel like public-service spots. They aim to set a mood, rather than convey practical information. And get ready for more of the same on other key Tory themes. Under fire from the Opposition NDP for planning to gradually raise the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 from 65, starting in 2023, the government has budgeted $8 million for OAS ads. With Harper’s image as an economic leader tied so closely to streamlining approval of natural-resource projects, his government has $5 million earmarked for ads to promote that thrust. “The problem with this kind of advertising,” says Queen’s University politics professor Jonathan Rose, “is that it serves no public policy purpose.”
...
Beyond the content of federal ads, serious questions surround how much money is being spent on them. Approved ad budgets for each department are disclosed quarterly on the website of the Treasury Board, the central agency overseeing federal spending. But those quarterly figures don’t seem to be a reliable predictor of actual advertising outlays. In 2010-11, the last year for which final figures are available, $65.4 million in ad spending was approved on a quarterly basis, but $83.3 million was ultimately spent, according to the government’s annual report on advertising. Asked to explain how $17.9 million more was spent that year than initially approved, a Treasury Board official said departments are allowed to dip into their general budgets to top up ad spending.

- Lawrence Martin rightly wonders why the Cons' attempt to lock Canada into a long-term investment deal with China absent any discussion or debate hasn't resulted in more of a reaction. But then, with Jim Flaherty looking to sell off the CMHC, it's not as if there's been a lack of other issues similarly demanding a response.

- Finally, the Star weighs in on Jason Kenney's grab for unilateral and unaccountable power to determine who's able to enter Canada:

(T)here is well-founded concern that this new law could be applied inconsistently and arbitrarily. And proponents of free speech may argue that it shouldn’t be the role of the government to keep out those with views we may find collectively reprehensible.

Yet Kenney says he will try to ensure that the law can’t be abused. He intends to issue a list of criteria by which one can be denied before the parliamentary committee, and reach out to his own party and the opposition for feedback. He insists he isn’t looking for “some broad generalized power to prevent the admission of people to Canada whose political opinions we disagree with.”

But the question is: if Kenney can already step in for “exceptional cases” at the border, why the need to enshrine it in law? And given his government’s track record, how can we be sure the law won’t be abused? We can’t. This is a bad plan and the minister would be wise to drop it now.