Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jordan Brennan and Kaylie Tiessen write that it's long past time to set a level of federal revenue sufficient to support the social programs Canadians want:

In the decades since [corporate-driven] reforms were undertaken, Canada experienced a significant deterioration in its macroeconomic performance: business investment has worsened and the rate of job creation and GDP growth have both decelerated. If there is no solid economic evidence to suggest that budgetary and tax reform succeeded in elevating investment levels or increasing the rate of economic growth, how are we to understand the commitment to balanced budgets and shrinking government?

The answer is, unsurprisingly, political. The Canadian welfare state grew out of the wreckage of the Great Depression. In the early postwar decades many of the federal programs that Canadians enjoy were created. As a share of GDP, budgetary revenue grew from 10 per cent in 1939 to 20 per cent by 1974 — an effective doubling of the size of the federal government during a period of exceptionally strong economic growth.

Today, after decades of proportional reductions in revenue and spending, the federal aspects of the welfare state have been significantly diminished. The political program of undoing the New Deal model of governance has largely succeeded in Canada, at least at the federal level.

But here’s the problem: cutting taxes or reducing spending will not facilitate reconciliation with Canada’s indigenous peoples, who experience a vast funding shortfall when it comes to infrastructure, education and health care. It will do nothing to make housing more affordable in Vancouver, nor will it expedite the transition to a low-carbon economy in Alberta. A balanced budget will not ease gridlock in the GTA, nor will it provide the health care resources Atlantic Canadians require to cope with an aging population.

Perhaps that’s why, after decades of the “smaller government is better” mantra, Canadians have opened themselves up to the utility of deficit financing. The next step would be to extend the conversation into the domain of taxation, to determine what level is required to solve some of Canada’s most pressing policy challenges.

- Lizanne Foster highlights how any promise of future benefits from the B.C. Libs is limited to the province's wealthy few, while Douglas Todd notes that there's broad public agreement with that expectation. And Martyn Brown offers a simple but vital formula to ensure change from Christy Clark's corrupt corporatism at the polls. 

- Meanwhile, William Yardley traces British Columbia's path from being ahead of the curve on climate change to clinging to fossil fuels. And Aurora Tejeida writes that there's been no followup at all on promises to protect the environment from inevitable oil spills.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on a push for Ontario to follow Iceland's lead in ensuring employer transparency to further the cause of pay equity. And Forum Research finds massive public support in the province for a $15 minimum wage - contrasted against not a single group polled which stands opposed to the possibility.

- Finally, Taylor Bendig questions the Wall government's choice to throw STC under the bus without any apparent planning or analysis.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Miles Corak writes about the spread of economic inequality in Canada:

Companies like ATS epitomize the underlying tide driving jobs and incomes when the computer revolution meets global markets. This tide never went away, even if until a year or so ago a swift current of oil made it easier for some of us to paddle in the opposite direction. It’s a tide offering prosperity to a lucky few, creating proportionately fewer jobs than Canadians need, and leaving many hanging on tight to whatever jetsam floats within reach.

But this tide was always there, even when it looked like we were richer than others. And it will continue to leave many Canadians standing still, waiting, and hoping for the promise of prosperity.

- Paul Mason examines the costs of disposable labour and theorizes that a new era of better treatment for workers might be approaching. But Tony Atkinson argues that we'll need a major shift in public policy as well to share in any future economic gains - and offers a few policy prescriptions to reverse the trend.

- Josh Zumbrun discusses Gabriel Zucman's work in determining how much wealth has been siphoned into tax havens.

- Kaylie Tiessen points out that we can learn from past child care programs while developing a national model.

- Finally, Neil Macdonald rightly argues that Stephen Harper's cynical attacks on women who wear niqabs represents a repudiation of the very concept of individual rights. And Richard Gwyn highlights Thomas Mulcair's courage and honesty in fighting back against the Cons' bigotry rather than playing along for political gain.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress exposes the Cons' utter detachment from the realities facing Canadian workers. And Kevin Page, Stephen Tapp and Gary Mason all expose their balanced-budget legislation as being at best a distraction tactic, and at worst an incentive for governments to do exactly what they shouldn't when the economy needs a boost from fiscal policy.

- Lu Wang reports on the ever-increasing gap between salaries and stock returns. Kaylie Tiessen points out the gap between the actual wages paid to far too many low-income workers, and the living wage required to get by in Toronto. And thwap highlights the choice we face between inclusive democracy and elitist capitalism - with the latter all too often forming the basis for policy choices.

- But as Scott Santens writes, a basic income could address many of the problems facing workers both in terms of making ends meet, and exercising personal rights and freedoms. 

- John Cartwright laments the spread of a two-tiered work structure designed to strip wages and benefits away from younger workers. Chris Kirkham and Tiffany Hsu write about the difficulty employees face trying to recoup their losses at the hands of employers who violate labour standards.

- The CDC examines the link between income and sleep as just another example of the greater difficulties facing lower-income citizens.

- Finally, Justin Ling reports that after being exposed to public scrutiny, the Cons' terror bill is now looking thoroughly unpopular.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- 24 Hours offers a debate as to whether or not we should pursue a basic income - though it's striking that the "con" case is based almost entirely on a message that a secure income for everybody can't be achieved, rather than any argument that it shouldn't.

- Gabriel Bristow writes about the next battle against austerity, this time arising out of general strikes in Belgium. And Tara Ehrcke muses about what a Canadian equivalent to Syriza could pursue by way of people-friendly policies, while Trish Hennessy looks at the middle-class economics which will likely define our next election campaign.

- Carol Goar examines Mariana Mazzucato's argument that we should value entrepreneurial government:

It takes government-led goal-setting backed up with public funds — Mazzucato calls this mission-based investment — to generate transformative knowledge, spawn technical breakthroughs and improve the economic outlook for everyone, including those at the bottom of the income pyramid. She identified a few such missions.

“I think the green challenge is so overwhelming that it could be a game-changer,” she said. But there are other strong candidates. “Who is thinking about adapting to an aging population? Who is reimaging the labour-intensive personal-care sector?”

The first imperative, Mazzucato acknowledged, is changing public opinion. She is making an all-out effort to debunk the myths underlying the private-sector-good/public-sector-bad mindset...

It is not the specific that interests Mazzucato; it is the idea that governments can pull together multi-talented teams of problem-solvers, spur innovation, marry science and industry and trigger waves of economic growth.

“We have a cartoonish image of the state as a dinosaur,” she says. “In fact, in countries that owe their growth to innovation, it is a key partner of the private sector — and often a more daring one.”

- And Kaylie Tiessen notes that constant corporate tax cuts - whether aimed at big or small businesses - haven't produced any of the promised gains.

- Eve-Lynn Couturier proposes some ways to make municipal revenue more secure. But unfortunately, Brad Wall is headed in the opposite direction, forcing Saskatchewan municipalities to budget based on revenues which he's threatening to withdraw in order to deflect from his government's mismanagement at the provincial level.

- Finally, Derrick O'Keefe describes how the Harper Cons plan to rely on terrorist hysteria as their core message in the lead up to the federal election campaign.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Sean McElwee is the latest to highlight how only a privileged few benefit in either the short term or the long term from unequal economic growth:

Milanovic and van der Weide decided to investigate how inequality affects growth across the income spectrum. They used a state-level survey conducted once every decade to estimate annualized income growth at different income percentiles. What the researchers find is that the old story of “trickle down” economics have no support in the data — instead, inequality boosts growth only for the rich.
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When the authors dug deeper and looked at individual states, they found that, “inequality is negatively associated… with subsequent real growth for the population located below the 25th percentile, and positively with growth for the population belonging to the top decile.” In simple language: Inequality benefits the rich and harms the poor. A rising tide doesn’t lift all boats — just the luxury yachts.

Using the data the authors have developed, we can discover what growth would look like in a more equitable society. The chart below shows annual income growth between 1960 and 2010 by percentile in yellow. The chart is sloped upward, meaning that the income of the richest grew by 1.8 percent each year, while the growth of the poorest grew by .7 percent each year. However, if inequality was reduced by one standard deviation (the difference between Connecticut and South Carolina) across the country, income growth for the poor would more than double, to 1.6 percent each year.

This has important political implications. First, we should not assume that the mere fact that inequality reduces economic growth will be enough to convince the rich to reduce it. Inequality benefits the rich immensely. Second, the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats has been so utterly disproved it should be embarrassing to state in public. 

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford argues that the Cons' continued insistence on demonizing organized labour is backfiring as the public realizes the importance of voices standing up for workers:

Where unions were once portrayed as greedy and unruly, they now survive (and even win) by successfully positioning themselves as defenders of public interest and universal rights. This reframing of the union message has been essential in their recuperated influence. Unions cannot be seen as “special interest” groups, enriching their own members at the expense of consumers or taxpayers. They must be seen as an institutional bulwark on the side of all those who work for a living, defending vulnerable people within a social order that is increasingly lopsided. As unions succeed in that effort, the political value of union-bashing will continue to erode.

But this lesson will likely be lost on the federal Conservatives. They are desperate to change the political channel, and eager to throw one more bone to their strident base. In that case, it is safe to expect more anti-union rhetoric in the year ahead.

- Kaylie Tiessen points out that the Ontario Libs are right back to ill-advised austerity economics - only this time with less fanfare about their real cuts to public services.

- Carol Goar discusses Scientists for a Right to Know as one of the crucial actors in restoring the principle the scientific research should be both carried out in the public interest, and treated as public knowledge. But Mike De Souza reports on why the Cons don't want the facts getting out - as they tend to involve political staffers insisting that civil servants falsify advice any time the truth proves inconvenient to their political message.

- Finally, Lorna Dueck asks whether we're still the Canada which once went out of its way to offer a home for refugees, while Erna Paris notes that there's also far too much mean-mindedness in Canada's past which is being echoed by today's government. And the Star is similarly appalled that the Cons are refusing to restore health care for refugees in Canada in the face of a court order requiring them to do so.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- PressProgress highlights how the Cons' stay in office has been marked by temporary rather than permanent jobs, while Kaylie Tiessen writes that precarious work is particularly prevalent in Ontario. And Erin Weir notes that more unemployed workers are now chasing after fewer job vacancies than even in the wake of the last recession.

- Kathleen Harris points out that the Cons' attempt to label refugees as "bogus" based solely on their country of origin bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality, as numerous claims from the U.S. and other countries labeled as "safe" have been found to be valid by the Immigration and Refugee Board. And she also finds the Cons applying a rather unusual definition of "protection" for refugees:

Alexis Pavlich, spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, said refugee reforms that include restricting health care means more protection for those in need and faster removal of those who don't.

That's right: the Cons are so callous as to claim that people in need get "more protection" by being denied essential health care.

- Meanwhile, Mike Palacek discusses the Cons' secret and deceptive plan to gut and privatize Canada Post - which of course was given a political push to replace the postal banking idea which would have resulted in better service and increased public returns.

- Tabatha Southey rightly observes that the Cons should want to distance themselves from Robert Goguen for grandstanding about a witness' gang rape. But the fact that they haven't seems to signal what seemed to me the most plausible explanation to begin with: is there any reason to think Goguen was doing anything but reading off his party's script to begin with?

- Finally, there are plenty of reasons to question Susan Delacourt's attempt to use relatively minor concerns about our current political system as a basis to eliminate political parties altogether - and Dale Smith neatly lays them out. But if we're looking for examples of the type of theory about political party operations which positively begs to be challenged, there are worse places to start than Jeffrey Simpson's insistence that leaders should hold the power to hand-pick their own pet candidates.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Anne Manne discusses how extreme wealth leads to narcissism and a lack of empathy, while pointing out that to merely recognizing the problem goes some way toward solving it:

Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of their wealth than poorer people. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans, those with earnings in the top 20%, contributed 1.3% of their income to charity, while those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2% of their income. The trend to meanness was worst in plush suburbs where everyone had a high income, and never laid eyes on a poor person. Insulation from people in need, Piff concluded, dampened charitable impulses.

Poorer people were also more likely to give to those charities servicing the genuinely needy. The rich gave to high-status institutions such as already well-endowed art galleries, museums and universities, while Feeding America, which deals with the nation’s poorest, got nothing.

These qualities are not set in concrete. "We’re not suggesting rich people are bad at all," said Piff, "but rather that psychological effects of wealth have these natural effects.’ It is, he said, a function of greater prosperity, rather than innate qualities of rich people.

Piff found that when shown images of children in poverty, the wealthy could behave more empathetically. Like the long campaign for the NDIS, which sensitised people to the plight of those with a disability or those caring for them, people can respond to good political leadership which primes them for generosity rather than meanness.

- And Darlena Kunha writes about the experience of poverty and income insecurity from the standpoint of a family which once believed itself to be beyond that risk:

The reality of poverty can spring quickly while the psychological effects take longer to surface. When you lose a job, your first thought isn’t, “Oh my God, I’m poor. I’d better sell all my nice stuff!” It’s “I need another job. Now.” When you’re scrambling, you hang on to the things that work, that bring you some comfort. That Mercedes was the one reliable, trustworthy thing in our lives.
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The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself. How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car, getting food. As if I were not allowed the food because of the car. As if I were a bad person.

We’ve now sold that house. My husband found a job that pays well, and we have enough left over for me to go to grad school. President Obama’s programs — from the extended unemployment benefits to the tax-free allowance for short-selling a home we couldn’t afford — allowed us to crawl our way out of the hole.

But what I learned there will never leave me. We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich. Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic. That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls. It came from me, even as I was living it.

- Kaylie Tiessen argues that Ontario shouldn't let a change in its credit outlook be used as a means to further trash the province's economy through austerity and tax slashing. And Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew's report on the treatment of Canadian banks offers a compelling indication as to why we shouldn't take the ratings agencies seriously at all - as the same firms which consistently gave perfect ratings to what proved to be derivative time bombs are now downgrading the outlook for Canadian banks merely because they might have to stand on their own two feet.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman points out that inflation hysteria serves primarily to ensure that the wealthy benefit at the expense of everybody else.

- Finally, PressProgress questions just how much further the Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants to go in eliminating employment insurance - though I'd suspect that zero social safety net for anybody would be just fine for one of the most extreme anti-social organizations in the country. And Andrew Stevens studies the abuse of temporary foreign workers (and resulting decline in service-sector wages) in Saskatchewan.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Andrew Jackson writes that increases in Canadian inequality have been the result of deliberate policy choices:

In an important recent book, Inequality and the Fading of Redistributive Politics, Keith Banting and John Myles argue that, while rooted in the market, politics has also been a major force behind rising income inequality in Canada. They emphasize the impact of deep cuts to income transfer programs for working-age Canadians in Canada’s “neo-liberal moment” in the mid-1990s.

Their argument is reinforced by Statistics Canada research by Andrew Heisz and Brian Murphy presented to a recent Institute for Research on Public Policy conference on income inequality.

Rising market income inequality in Canada over the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s was broadly offset by redistributive government policies until the early 1990s. However, for a decade, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, the redistributive impact of the personal income tax and income transfer system faded significantly, and then stabilized at a lower level.

This change was almost entirely due to changes in income transfer programs, as opposed to changes in the personal income tax system. And the big change was cuts to unemployment insurance (UI) and social assistance.
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The problem is that a rising percentage of working Canadians can find only insecure and part-time jobs at low wages. The major reduction of EI and social assistance income benefits has not been matched by other means of propping up low incomes from work, such as tax credits for the working poor and child benefits for low-income families. These remain relatively small programs.

Addressing rising income inequality will mean coming to terms not just with long-term trends in the market, but also with the political decisions we made some 20 years ago.

- And Rick Goldman agrees that we'll need a strong policy response to reduce inequality.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar discusses the CLC's similar recognition that precarious work and underemployment represent growing problems for Canadian workers. And Kaylie Tiessen's CCPA study observes that the problem is particularly acute in Ontario.

- Tim Harford suggests that insularity and secrecy played a massive role in the 2008 economic meltdown - and offers some proposals to make sure the financial system is less vulnerable to both.

- Carol Linnitt comments on the oil industry's government-approved takeover of Alberta's educational curriculum.

- And finally, Matt Fairley's reporting on an increase in wireless rates across most of Canada makes it clear that there's only one type of competition which actually leads to more affordable basic services for consumers:

Canada’s big three wireless carriers have hiked the base prices for new plans by $5 in most markets over the past two months.

Rogers, Telus and Bell Mobility now all charge $80 per month for new smartphone plans with a new contract, $5 more than those same plans cost when they were introduced last year. The prices for other smartphone plans with more data cost upwards of $145.

The price hikes affect every province except Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
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Manitoba and Saskatchewan, however, have more competitive pricing. Due to strong regional competitors in SaskTel and MTS, Bell and Rogers plans start at $65 per month with five GB of data. An equivalent plan elsewhere in the country costs $55 more per month.