Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Neil Shaw reports on the demands by Scottish doctors that their government reinstate COVID -19protections in health care facilities. And Tia Ewing reports on new research showing the devastating and lasting effects of long COVID. 

- AFP reports on what's already a record-breaking year for wildfire damage in Canada even before we reach peak fire season. Dharna Noor writes about the dirty energy sector's repudiation of any climate promises even as their devastating impact on the world manifests itself worse and sooner than ever anticipated. And Caitlyn Clark discusses how workers are having to fight for their health and safety against employers determined to expose them to unmitigated harm from smoke and heat. 

- Yvette D'Entremont writes that Nova Scotia's government is choosing not to collect the data needed to know exactly how bad the province's housing crisis is. 

- Jon Schwarz highlights how the hanger-on class which has thus far supported the accumulation of wealth by the elite few is becoming the new target for exploitation as lower classes are squeezed dry. And Cory Doctorow discusses why it's dangerous to hope for better outcomes when merely replacing one corporate monopoly with another. 

- Finally, Bill Longstaff points out that Norway serves as a compelling, one-word refutation of the most deeply-embedded corporatist assumptions which have been allowed to form the basis for Canadian economy policy. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Krugman notes that hostility toward basic public health protection such as masks represents a stark example of conservatives sacrificing human lives to identity politics - though it's far from the first or the last one. And James Downie writes that the Republicans governments reversing mask mandates know perfectly well that the credence given to anti-social actors makes it impossible for people to take precautions for themselves.

- Colleen Barry reports on the new wave of COVID-19 in Europe due to increasingly dangerous variants. Camelia Dewan contrasts Norway's relative success in requiring everybody to contribute to limiting the spread of the coronavirus against the disastrous results of  Sweden's herd immunity strategy (complete with willingness to endanger the lives of elderly people along the way). And Lynn Desjardins reports that Canadians are understandably wary about our long-term care system now that its weaknesses have been exposed.

- Srinivas Murthy writes that the most effective strategy to contain COVID-19 involves making sure vaccines get where they're needed around the globe, rather than being systematically diverted to the wealthiest countries first. 

- Joseph Hall observes that economists don't share the right's insistence on putting selective deficit phobia ahead of relief and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Finally, PressProgress follows up on the Pallister PCs' secret legislative agenda.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Oliver Moore reports on Greyhound's elimination of most of its Western Canadian bus service. Emily Riddle offers a reminder that the lack of transportation puts Indigenous women and other marginalized people at risk. And Simon Enoch highlights the obvious need for Saskatchewan to resume operating a public rural bus service.

- The Globe and Mail feigns shock at the revelation that Doug Ford is in fact Doug Ford, while Tom Parkin documents the fiscal crisis Ford is deliberately creating. And Andray Domise appropriately labels Ford's rule-by-antagonism - though it's worth noting that the under the typical right-wing faux-populist model, deliberate attacks on perceived enemies serve largely to distract from the greater goal of looting the public treasury for the benefit of cronies.

- Joel Lexchin examines the large amounts of money spent by big pharma to try to influence Canadian health care providers - and the lack of much means for the public to track the results of that investment.

- Scott Sinclair makes the case for Canada to protect its supply management system from the demands of U.S. agribusiness giants.

- Finally, Michelle Chen writes about a push for New York City to set up a public bank to ensure all of its residents have access to needed financial services. And Maddy Savage points out how Norway's responsible and socially-minded management of resource wealth has made it one of the few developed countries where younger workers are able to live comfortably.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Matt Bruenig highlights Norway's high level of social ownership, with 76% of non-home wealth in public hands in an extremely prosperous country. And Patrick Collinson reports on the latest World Happiness Survey, showing Norway within a group of relatively equal Nordic countries at the very top.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the elements of economic democracy, as well as the need for the NDP to offer voters a clear option of social ownership:

(H)owever important things like Medicare, education, and social security were, they did not constitute the outer boundaries of the social-democratic project. Put another way, what fundamentally distinguished social democracy from liberalism was a conviction of who should control the economy, with liberals saying it should be within largely private control, and social democrats claiming that, through various means, the economy should be controlled publicly.

Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state. This isn’t to say the party is without existing ideas on this front. Andrea Horwath’s Ontario NDP is pledging to re-nationalize Hydro Ontario, and is calling for a reversal of many contracted out public services. Similarly, Niki Ashton’s federal leadership campaign made public ownership a central plank, while Charlie Angus had specific policies that would encourage worker and community-owned enterprises. Still, much more must be done on this front, and as we’ve seen, specific lessons are found within the party’s own recent history.

Jagmeet Singh’s NDP has already made impacts on issues like overhauling our tax system with a view towards a more equitable society. But if the party wants to offer a unambiguous distinction between itself and the ostensibly progressive Trudeau Liberals, a platform predicated on democratizing workplaces and the wider economy is a fantastic start, especially when aligned with provincial NDP sections willing to promote the same objectives in those jurisdictions where they have the most power.

- Richard Poplak points out the outsized (and unaccountable) role played by Export Development Canada in financing questionable corporate activity.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the difficulty injured workers have securing compensation in the face of abusive practices by Ontario employers. Tim Berners-Lee warns against allowing a small number of massive tech firms to dictate access to content online. And Crawford Kilian argues that a public-sector drug manufacturer is a needed cure for the problems with corporate incentives to encourage overprescription.

- Finally, Bob Ramsay writes that Canada's most privileged people are getting more antisocial with time and increased wealth, as charitable contributions as a share of income plummet among those with the most to give.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Branko Milanovic highlights the futility of pretending that market mechanisms will produce anything other than profit-oriented outcomes - and the observation represents an obvious reason not to put public services in corporate hands. And David Sloan Wilson (in introducing an interview with Sigrun Aasland) points out how Norway's active government has produced better social and economic outcomes than business-focused policies elsewhere:

Modern society requires an extensive infrastructure, which does not emerge bottom-up from unregulated markets. This has always been the case, in America as elsewhere, as my recent interview with Daron Acemoglu attests. One reason that the Nordic nations work well might be because they have not—yet—succumbed to the siren’s song of free market fundamentalism.

A strong state capable of building infrastructure is not enough. It must also be an inclusive state that works for the benefit of everyone, as opposed to an extractive state that works only for the benefit of an elite few, as my interview with Acemoglu also makes clear. Inclusiveness requires a balance of power among the various sectors of the society. Perhaps the Nordic nations work well for this reason also—strong states working collaboratively with a strong private sector, strong labor unions, and a strong, well-informed, and trusting electorate.

Even this is only necessary and not sufficient. A national economy that works well is a complex adaptive system, like an automobile with many interdependent parts. Even a strong and inclusive state won’t work well if it doesn’t put the parts of its economy together in the right way, which is not an easy matter for any complex system.

- Nick Dearden discusses how the CETA is nothing more than a ticking time bomb for citizens. But fortunately, Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew note that there will still be some opportunities to ensure it doesn't get ratified.

- David Macdonald offers a preview as to what to expect in the federal government's latest fiscal update. And Louis-Philippe Rochon reminds us not to obsess over deficit numbers when we have urgent needs going unmet.

- Ian MacLeod reports that the Libs are breaking another election promise by abandoning any pretense of providing for real-time oversight of Canada's security state. And Tom Parkin weighs in on Justin Trudeau's gross failure to improve the health and welfare of First Nations communities.

- Finally, Courtney Howard and Ryan Meili argue that a price on pollution will go a long way toward improving public health.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Alan Freeman notes that the Libs' aversion to raising public revenue may lock in some of the Cons' most damaging actions:

With the new Liberal government facing fierce economic headwinds — plus a billion-dollar shortfall created by its middle-income tax cut, and a growing need for revenue to cover promised spending on everything from infrastructure and veterans to First Nations and refugees — it would seem logical to at least mull the possibility of raising the GST.

That appeared to be what Finance Minister Bill Morneau was doing earlier this week when he gave a convoluted response to a journalist that was interpreted as opening the possibility to a GST hike sometime in the future.

Within hours — probably after a panicked call from the Prime Minister’s Office — Morneau tweeted a climbdown of his own: “Contrary to misleading headlines, we are not considering changes to the GST.”

What Morneau made clear is that the Liberals are scared to death of being slammed as tax-grabbers by the Conservatives. While much of the Harper legacy is being scrapped — his obstinate refusal to take action on climate change, his surly, tough-guy foreign policy — the anti-tax mantra lives on.

It’s notable that the first thing on Parliament’s to-do list after the Liberals’ election win was the middle-class tax cut. The Liberals want Canadians to believe that the government’s tax burden (except on the super-rich) can continue to decline as it has since 2000.

- Eric Jaffe reports on new research showing how social deprivation can keep children from meeting their potential for intellectual development. And the Globe and Mail argues that Quebec should be honest about any plans to eliminate a high-quality, public child care system in favour of pushing parents toward more expensive private care.

- Andrea Germanos reports on the latest Human Development Index rankings which show Norway at the top of the pack.

- And in what may not be a coincidence as to the importance of respect for workers in generating shared prosperity, the ILO highlights Norway's leadership in ratifying a new protocol against forced labour among other conventions protecting labour rights. And Edward Keenan discusses the different sides of a gig economy - and notes that the 1% may be confusing its own ability to engage in highly-paid consulting with the reality facing precarious workers.

- Finally, Branko Milanovic offers a theory as to the limits in how much worse income inequality could get in the U.S.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Paul Weinberg discusses the need to focus on inequality in Canada's federal election, while Scott Deveau and Jeremy Van Loon take note of the fact that increased tax revenue is on the table. The Star's editorial board weighs in on the NDP's sound and progressive fiscal plan. And Matthew Yglesias includes the rise of the NDP as part of the growth of a new, international progressive movement.

- Rank and File interviews Michael Butler about the privatization of health care in Saskatchewan, as well as the role of the federal government in ensuring a viable public system. Thomas Walkom comments on Thomas Mulcair's health care promises - and the stark contrast between the NDP's efforts to build our health care system and the deafening silence from the Cons and the Libs. And the Wellesley Institute finds a similar lack of anything useful from the NDP's major-party opponent in analyzing prescription drug policies.

- Bruce Campbell compares the respective benefits Canada and Norway have managed to achieve from oil exploitation - with the result looking downright ugly due to what we've given away.

- Jorge Barrera reports on the latest revelations about the Harper Cons coming out of Bruce Carson's influence-peddling trial.

- Laura Payton reports on a deal the Cons struck with a gun lobby group - then reneged on - in order to silence opposition to Bill C-51. But Haydn Watters points out that the Cons are at least being quite helpful in branding themselves as the party of 24-hour surveillance. 

- Finally, Keith Boag writes that while we should demand more from our leaders, we won't get it unless people are also more engaged in how we're governed.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Stephen Marche discusses the Cons' ongoing efforts to make Canada a more closed and ignorant country:

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.
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His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.

The darkness has resulted, organically, in one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in Canadian history.

- Jeremy Nuttall writes that the experience of reporting on the Harper Cons' actions bears a striking resemblance to the life of state-controlled media in China. And the Vancouver Sun interviews Gus Van Harten about Harper's efforts to hand power to Chinese businesses at the expense of Canadian citizens and governments.

- Brian Milner and Jeff Lewis are the latest writers to compare Norway's success in preserving its resource wealth to Alberta's minimal reserves.

- Glen McGregor reports that the Cons' Unfair Elections Act - which of course was rammed through Parliament with insufficient review because of the urgency of putting rules in place for this fall's election - was designed to ensure that voters can't trace the source of robocalls until after this fall's election.

- The CP reports that the Cons are looking to resurrect the concept of participating in Star Wars missile defence based on their own efforts to scare the Canadian public. And Amanda Connolly points out just another example of a Con MP - in this case John Williamson - callously using a dead Canadian soldier as a political prop.

- Finally, Robyn Benson examines the status of women in Canada, while highlighting the need to elect a government which isn't out to undermine it. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Eric Morath points out that a job (or even multiple jobs) can't be taken as an assurance that a person can avoid relying on income supports and other social programs. PressProgress offers some important takeaways from the Canadian Labour Congress' study of the low-wage workers. Angella MacEwen writes about the spread of the $15 minimum wage movement in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar writes that while we should be looking to improve our social safety net, we need to do so while taking into account the real experience of the people relying upon it.

- Jason Warick reports on Eric Howe's findings that Saskatchewan is severely limiting its own future by failing to boost aboriginal participation in our economy. And Mitchell Anderson reminds us that Alberta (among other Canadian jurisdictions) has turned resource development into little long-term gain:

Which place is doing a better job of capturing public value from a public resource? Dividing resource revenues by production reveals some shocking figures. Norway realized revenues of $87.69 per barrel in 2013. Alaska managed $38.54. And Alberta? Just $4.38 -- one-twentieth what our Norwegian cousins managed to rake in.
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Alberta has already produced 15 per cent more conventional oil and gas than Norway, and didn't have to go 200 kilometres out in the North Sea to get it. Even at current depressed prices, Alberta oil, gas and bitumen production to 2013 would have a combined market value of $1.7 trillion. So where did the money go?

The answer is not economic nor political. It is cultural. Albertans have accepted a consistent and repeated message from a number of vested interests that taxation is bad, government is inept, and public resources should be privatized. Once voters believe that, effective government oversight is politically impossible and industry gets to keep a larger portion of Canada's resource pie -- estimated to be worth some $33 trillion based only on our inventory of petroleum and timber.
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So what does Norway do to ensure their private sector partners don't walk away with most of the resource wealth?

• Norway acts like an owner. Companies doing business in Norway are under no illusions about who is in charge. Misleading or lying to Norwegian authorities can lead to forfeited tenures or even jail time.

• Norway taxes to the max and makes no apologies about it. Taxation on oil profits is currently close to 80 per cent. One former energy minister even chewed out his bureaucrats in full view of enraged oil executives when they threatened to pull out of the country after taxes were raised. Noting that none had actually walked away, he told his underlings "we should have taken more!"

• Norway taxes profits, not extraction. Alberta instead sells oil and bitumen by the barrel, creating virtually zero incentives for efficiencies or value added. The Norwegian government wants companies to make money because for every dollar they make, Norway makes four. With such clearly aligned interests, companies are lining up to do business there.

• Norway captures and distributes wealth. Petroleum helps finance some of the most generous social programs in the world and every Norwegian knows it. With public buy-in like that, companies have certainty their investments are welcome and their product can get to market. Companies spending billions in the oilsands have no such assurance given the pitched battles around resource policy here in Canada. No public buy-in, no certainty. Sorry fellas, there's no free lunch on that one.

• Norway stashed the cash. All petroleum revenues go into a stand-alone oil fund administered by the Norwegian Central Bank -- not their government. This firewall prevents elected officials from getting lazy about budgeting since they can only access four per cent each fiscal year. This now-massive pot of money is also only invested outside of the country to avoid inflating the currency.

• Norway put public players on the field. One of the first things Norway did was start Statoil, the first of their two state-owned oil companies. They now own about 40 per cent of its production and 50 per cent of its reserves. These investments and risks have richly paid off and typically now bring in as much revenue as taxation. What stake does Alberta own in its production? Zero, and the balance sheet shows it.

- Finally, L. Ian MacDonald writes that the Cons' environmental irresponsibility looms as a leading cause of the death of pipeline expansions. And Barbara Yaffe slams the ineffective response to the English Bay oil spill by multiple levels of government.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Stephen Burgen reports on Thomas Piketty's view that it's long past time for voters to have anti-austerity options where none existed in the past. And along similar lines, Murray Dobbin sets out the stark choice facing Canadians:

Canadians will have to continue to watch their Scandinavian neighbours use the wheel and prosper while we remain captives to the free market priesthood. Norway is the logical choice of neighbour to compare ourselves to, if you can stomach it. In Canada we have virtually given away our energy heritage through criminally low royalty rates over a period of some 70 years. Norway bargained hard with oil companies to develop its relatively newfound resource -- and kept ownership of it. The result, as reported in The Tyee last year, is a heritage fund of (as of a year ago) $909,364 billion (Canadian). That puts tiny Norway $1.5 trillion ahead of us and while each Canadian has a $17,000 share of our $600 billion debt national debt, each Norwegian has a $178,000 stake in their surplus. Norway puts aside a billion dollars a week from its oil resource.

But all that oil money aside (literally), Norway actually funds its government services through taxes which its citizens gladly pay. And why not? As Mitch Andersen reported, "Norwegians enjoy universal day care, free university tuition, per capita spending on health care 30 per cent higher than Canada and 25 days of paid vacation every year." We, on the other hand, live in a country where a third of citizens believe in Harper's fiscal self-flagellation, in an extremist religion that calls upon us all to deliberately impoverish ourselves. Hallelujah.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar notes that we could build a stronger society by ensuring that the wealthiest among us pay their fair share:

For decades there have been sporadic calls from economists, think-tanks and opposition MPs to jack up tax rates for the privileged elite. The response of the finance department is best captured by a 1985 remark from then finance minister Michael Wilson. “Canada has an acute shortage of rich people,” he told the Canadian Economics Association, dismissing the budgetary impact as negligible.

That mindset prevailed through five Conservative and Liberal governments although no politician has expressed it as bluntly as Wilson. It still holds sway, despite a dramatic widening of the gap between rich and poor; a proliferation of self-styled “supermanagers” who rake in 170 times as much as the average worker; and a deepening sense of injustice among young people, victims of corporate cost-cutting, struggling wage earners and worried middle-class families.

It is true, as Wilson observed, that imposing higher taxes on the ultra-rich wouldn’t produce a fiscal bonanza. But it would slow the growth of inequality, ensure high-income earners pay their share of the cost of running the country and give the stalled majority a stake in Canada’s economic success. It would also bring Canada’s tax code into the 21st century. When the current rules were enacted, a salary of $137,000 put an individual in the economic stratosphere. Stock options were unheard of. The distribution of wealth was relatively stable.

None of those assumptions pertain to today’s socio-economic landscape.

- Keith Reynolds discusses another scathing report on P3s - this time from British Columbia, where a provincial cheerleading agency has regularly avoided considering publicly-owned options in order to make privatization look palatable.

- Aurin Squire notes that many in New York are far better off as a result of police refusing to enforce "quality of life" offences.

- Finally, Lana Payne comments on the broken relationship between the Harper Cons and the veterans who were used as political props for so long. And Tim Naumetz reports that a minor cabinet shuffle has done nothing to change the Cons' preference for silencing veterans rather than listening to them.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Barrie McKenna looks to Norway as an example of how an oil-rich country can both ensure long-term benefits from its non-renewable resources, and be far more environmentally responsible than Canada has been to date.

- Michal Rozworski discusses how the devaluing of work is a largely political phenomenon. And Paul Mason wonders what it will take for workers who now see themselves as disenfranchised to fight back again a system that's rigged against them. 

- Speaking of which, Brendan James discusses a new study suggesting that the U.S. is past the point of being a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. Paul Buchhelt comments on the disappearance of middle-class wealth. And John Stapleton studies (PDF) how lower-income citizens are both excluded and exploited by our financial system, while Arturo Garcia highlights Matt Taibbi's continued observation that absolutely nobody has been held responsible for financial-sector criminality even when it's crashed the economy.

- Jim Bronskill reports on Suzanne Legault's efforts to save access to information from Con cutbacks. The Star slams Tony Clement's Orwellian definition of "open government", while Sean Holman writes that even in opposition the Libs' plans don't seem to be much of an improvement. And Dan Leger writes about the spread of deliberately-cultivated ignorance among citizens across the developed world:

Here are some facts to illuminate your day: violent crime is getting worse, the country is overrun with immigrants, there’s an epidemic of teenage pregnancies and we’ve become a nation of geriatrics.

And that’s not all: 20 percent of Canadians are Muslim while the Christian population shrinks. Unemployment stalks the land.

No wonder people think we need to crack down on crime, choke off border access, enforce morality on teenagers and encourage Christian family values.

The problem is, the statements aren’t facts. They are widely held but entirely incorrect perceptions and they are common across the western world.
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(G)overning from the gut by capitalizing on fear of crime, economic disruption or terrorism is a Conservative stock in trade under Stephen Harper. He’s been in power since 2006, so it works pretty well.

Of course the alternative to perception-driven politics is reliable public information; the kind you would get, say, from the mandatory long-form census. The Conservatives cancelled that in 2010.

Perhaps Canada would have better environmental policies if people were fully informed about pollution and climate change? The current government forbids scientists from telling the public about their work.

- Finally, Michael Harris notes that even as the Cons publicly claimed to have backed off their longstanding public push to buy F-35s which are ill-suited to Canada's purposes, they're in fact barging ahead with a plan to take delivery in the next couple of years.

[Edit: added link.]

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- thwap nicely summarizes how we've allowed our economy to rely on (and feed into) the whims of a small group of insiders, rather than being harnessed for any sense of public good:

(W)hat's changed today is that the wealthy clearly have more money than they know what to do with. And it's rendered our economies top-heavy. Financialization and financial speculation. Which does nothing for ordinary people. Tax-cuts to wealthy and the corporations just go into the banks and into speculation. Tax-increases to the wealthy and the corporations can help mitigate government deficits without harming the economy themselves. Because the wealthy aren't doing anything productive with the money we've been allowing them to miser. We'll get more bang for the buck taxing and spending than we will allowing them to hoard it and gamble with it.

- And Toni Pickard makes the case for a guaranteed annual income to ensure that Canadians can rest assured they won't fall into deep poverty.

- Sarah Treanor compares Norway's use of its oil wealth to that of the UK, and concludes that trust is a major factor in the development of a sovereign wealth fund which now offers massive benefits to an entire country:

"For this kind of system to work, you need to have an enormous level of trust," says Prof Cappelen. "Trust that the money isn't going to be mismanaged - that it's not going to be spent in a way you don't like.
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"We trust the government. We believe our tax money will be spent wisely. once you start trusting that others are contributing their share then you are happy to contribute yours."

So is Norway rich because of Norwegians high level of trust, or are its citizens trusting because they are rich?

"I think it is both," says Prof Cappelen. "High levels of trust make economic growth easier." 

- But of course, trust and security need to be based on reasonable expectations as to how our public officials will act - and there's not much room for optimism based on the ones holding power at the moment. On that front, Iglika Ivanova points out that our tax system has been systematically warped to favour the wealth over the past 50 years, while PressProgress documents the sharp decline in EI benefit availability for unemployed workers. Doug Nesbitt takes a look at the pattern of Canadian governments and other employers looking to demolish retirement security for their workers past and present. David Sirota reports that Chris Christie is just one of many U.S. governors instead using pension funds as a means to reward political supporters with big-money, zero-accountability investment contracts (h/t to David Dayen). And David Cay Johnston notes that a tiny "prosperous class" is taking the vast majority of U.S. wage gains, leaving effectively nothing for upwards of 90% of workers.

- Finally, Murray Dobbin weighs in on the need to value and promote kindness, rather than celebrating ruthlessness in politics and business alike:

The stronger the imperative to compete, the weaker become family, community and friendship connections, because in rampant consumer capitalism -- promoted and reinforced by television culture -- such connections are seen as irrelevant. Or worse, they are seen as weak and inefficient means, if not actual barriers, to the end of achieving more stuff. We are competing in a zero-sum game whose rules are written by those with psychopathic tendencies. As Fred Guerin writes in Truthout, "Obedience, docility, amorality and careerism will be duly rewarded. Those who can regularly suspend any desire they have to think from the perspective of another, or on behalf of a more universal or common good will be promoted."

Guerin is getting at the real roots of our crisis in democracy. It is not first-past-the-post voting systems, or the cancellation of government funding for parties, or even the role of TV advertising. It is at its core our gradual acquiescence "to things that are contrary to our individual and communal interests." This acquiescence, say Guerin, is the "consequence of very gradual political and corporate indoctrination that consolidates power not only by inducing fear and uncertainty, but also by rewarding unbridled greed, opportunism and self-interest."

Is there an antidote to this death-culture? Can we reclaim our capacity to think beyond our immediate self-interest and regain our political agency -- our ability to act as citizens and not just consumers? Can we begin to create a shared space where we can actually imagine a future worth having, talk about big ideas and recover the notion that we can act in concert for the broader good?

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- James Meek writes about the UK's privatization scam, and how it's resulted in citizens paying far more for the basic services which are better provided by a government which actually has the public interest within its mandate:

Privatisation failed to demonstrate the case made by the privatisers that private companies are always more competent than state-owned ones – that private bosses, chasing the carrot of bonuses and dodging the stick of bankruptcy, will always do better than their state-employed counterparts. Through euphemisms such as "wealth creation" and "enjoying the rewards of success" Thatcher and her allies have promoted the notion that greed on the part of a private executive elite is the chief and sufficient engine of prosperity for all. The result has been 35 years of denigration of the concept of duty and public service, as well as a squalid ideal of all work as something that shouldn't be cared about for its own sake, but only for the money it brings. The magic dust of the market was of little use to the bosses of the newly privatised Railtrack in the mid-1990s. They thought they could sack people with impunity – not just signalling and maintenance staff but expert engineers and researchers – and carry out a massive line-upgrade cheaply with the most advanced new technology. Unfortunately the people who could have told them that the new technology didn't exist were the people they had sacked. As a result, the company went bust in 2002, and had to be renationalised.

Privatisation failed to make firms compete or give customers more choice – said to be the canonical virtues of privatisation. Pretty hard, you would think, to privatise water companies, when they are all monopolies, with nobody to compete with, and can't offer customers a choice – neither the choice of which supplier to use nor the choice of whether to take a service or not. And yet the English water companies were privatised, and in such a way that customers have been overcharged ever since. The privatisers loved competition, but the actual privatised competitors hate it. The competitive vision of those who designed Britain's electricity privatisation – a rumbustious, referee-supervised free-for-all between sellers and makers of electricity old and new, large and small – has degenerated into an opaque oligopoly of a handful of giant players.
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A tax is generally thought of as something that only a government can levy, but this is a semantic distortion that favours the free market belief system. If a payment to an authority, public or private, is compulsory, it's a tax. We can't do without electricity; the electricity bill is an electricity tax. We can't do without water; the water bill is a water tax. Some people can get by without railways, and some can't; they pay the rail tax. Students pay the university tax. The meta-privatisation is the privatisation of the tax system itself; even, it could be said, the privatisation of us, the former citizens of Britain. By packaging British citizens up and selling them, sector by sector, to investors, the government makes it possible to keep traditional taxes low or even cut them. By moving from a system where public services are supported by progressive general taxation to a system where they are supported exclusively by the flat fees people pay to use them, they move from a system where the rich are obliged to help the poor to a system where the less well-off enable services that the rich get for what is, to them, a trifling sum. The commodity that makes water and power cables and airports valuable to an investor, foreign or otherwise, is the people who have no choice but to use them. We have no choice but to pay the price the toll-keepers charge. We are a human revenue stream; we are being made tenants in our own land, defined by the string of private fees we pay to exist here.

- Meanwhile, Paul Watson compares Norway's well-planned savings and use of oil resources for public benefit to Canada's increasingly reckless rush to give away every resource a multinational corporation can rip out of the ground:

They’re succeeding because Norway holds an unshakable principle, one that has survived political shifts to the right and left since huge offshore oil reserves were discovered in 1969.

The canon was set four decades earlier in a national debate over ownership of hydro-electric projects, and it bridged a generation, from waterfalls to oil wells: Norway’s natural resources belong to the people.

“International companies resisted the model very much, but they had no choice. They had to accept it,” says Terje Hagen, an economist at the University of Oslo. “I think the agreement in parliament was quite broad.”

Norway’s current Conservative-led coalition government justifies one of the world’s highest tax rates on oil company profits this way: petroleum and natural gas are finite resources that generate higher profits than other enterprises and therefore command higher taxes.
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Norway’s government takes 78 per cent of oil company profits in tax, which quickly runs to billions of dollars a year. The fund multiplies through investments in stocks, bonds and property holdings.

It is quickly closing in on $1 trillion, just 18 years after Norway made an initial investment of around $345 million in 1996.

The government spends a portion of the profits each year on improving people’s lives while staying true to the earlier generation who decided it would be wrong to splurge on themselves.

By Norwegian standards, Canada has squandered a lot of its resource riches instead of locking up the royalties and taxes oil companies pay into long-term investments and enjoying the benefits of steadily growing profits.

A small but growing group of policy analysts think Canadians should overcome their history of provinces often jealously guarding resource revenues and do more sharing for the long-term, national good.

- The Vancouver Sun reports on BMO's study into the cycle of debt and stress facing younger Canadians.

- And speaking of gratuitous stress on workers, Don Pittis recognizes the fundamental unfairness of allowing Quebec's government to wriggle out from under agreed pension benefits at the expense of employees who have counted on what they've been promised, while Honour Our Deal has an update on the similar attack on Regina civic pensions. But the CP reports that the New Brunswick NDP is taking a stand to protect needed retirement income from other parties who would gleefully legislate it out of existence.

- Finally, James Surowiecki discusses the economics behind the development of prescription drugs - and how the lack of incentive to develop effective new antibiotics may prove just as deadly for us in the future as the similar neglect in combating Ebola is in the developing world today.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada's woeful excuse for negotiations with the oil sector - particularly compared to the lasting social benefits secured by Norway in making the best of similar reserves:

Digging through the numbers, it seems Norway is considerably more skilled at negotiation. By charging higher taxes and investing equity ownership in their own production, the Norwegian taxpayer was paid $46.29 BOE in 2012. That same year, the U.K. taxpayer realized only $20.08 per BOE -- less than half as much.

What about Canada? Much of our production is bitumen, which admittedly is a lower value (and often unprocessed) product with higher extraction costs. That said, it seems the nicest nation on earth is being taken to the cleaners. In 2012, Canada produced more than two billion BOE and collected $18 billion in provincial and federal taxes and royalties. This means that the Canadian taxpayer realized a benefit of about $9 per BOE -- less than one-fifth what Norway collected in the same year.

Canada produces 45 per cent more petroleum than Norway. Imagine for the sake of argument that Canada collected what Norwegians did between 2009 and 2012. In those four years, Canada would have enjoyed revenues of $365 billion -- enough to pay off more than half of our national debt.
...
Every provincial jurisdiction is also in direct competition with each other in a race to the bottom to attract private petroleum investment. Internal government documents accessed by the Alberta Federation of Labour found that B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan charge lower royalty rates than any U.S. state. Bizarrely, this was framed as a public policy achievement.

Since our country has an every-province-for-itself negotiating strategy, job strapped jurisdictions are not only contending with immensely powerful outside forces, but their own angry electorate every few years. It's hard to drive a hard bargain when voters can be maneuvered to take up industry's negotiating position. Nothing motivates a politician quite like the prospect of electoral defeat, and voters have become enlisted as unwitting allies in the billion-dollar brinksmanship of industry to access resources at ever-cheaper prices.

- Jane Gerster's report following up on David Macdonald's study of wealth inequality includes this apt observation from Erin Weir:

In many ways, the growing divide is more concerning than income inequality, said Erin Weir, economist for the United Steelworkers.

“Wealth matters because it also confers political power and social status,” Weir said, adding “wealth makes increasing inequality a self-reinforcing trend: invested wealth is a source of income, those who already have the most wealth have the greatest capacity to accumulate more wealth.”

- Update: And Alex Pareene responds to the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling to further facilitate the flow of concentrated wealth into politics on by pointing out the possibility of reducing wealth inequality in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford reviews the neoliberal policy choices which have exacerbated that inequality over the past few decades.

- Finally, Sheila Fraser rightly slams the Cons' cynical attack on Canadian voting rights. And Bruce Cheadle reports on how the Unfair Elections Act is set up to facilitate yet more Robocon-style schemes - even as Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor confirm the connection between the Cons' party database and the 2011 voter suppression fraud.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- In keeping with the theme of this week's column, the Star-Phoenix questions the Wall government's choice to neglect existing school infrastructure. And Lana Payne's message about how leaders react in a crisis also looks to be closely intertwined with the need to plan ahead before a crisis actually starts.

- But then, governments do have to choose their priorities. And once again, the Cons' choice is to spend tens of millions of public dollars on public relations for a tar-sands sector which could easily afford to pitch its own products, while standing firmly in the way of oil industry regulations needed for Canada to meet even modest greenhouse gas emission goals.

- Meanwhile, Alister Doyle offers a prime example of what can happen when resources are administered for the public good rather than for the sole benefit of the corporate class - as Norway's sovereign wealth fund has reached the level of making every resident a nominal millionaire. And Thomas Walkom discusses the debate on Canada's left between reforming the oil sector and looking to curb any reliance on it whatsoever.

- Erin Anderssen reports on the Ontario Medical Association's call for employers to allow workers to report sick days without straining the health care system through doctor's notes - particular in the middle of flu season where the effect can be to encourage the spread of viruses.

- And finally, Susan Delacourt seeks to apply Frank Luntz' take on U.S. politics to Canada. But digby reminds us why we shouldn't lend much credence to a GOP spinmeister's crocodile tears when he played a key role in causing the damage he's now lamenting.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Bloomberg reminds us of the nest egg Norway has built up by taking ownership of its own natural resources (and the consensus among conservative parties and business groups in favour of social spending is also worth highlighting). And Canadians for Tax Fairness point out the growing global movement calling for tax justice as part of a more fair distribution of wealth.

- But sadly, Jimmy Gutman notes that Saskatchewan is following a rather different path - with piracy taking the place of stewardship.

- And our local regressives certainly have their peers elsewhere in putting the public interest last - ranging from Republican bullies to UK Conservative manipulators.

- CBC reports on the most positive step we've seen in electoral fairness for some time, as Elections Canada has set up a non-partisan group of experts to advise on federal elections. Which means we can expect the Cons to complain about that plan being beyond Elections Canada's mandate in 3...2...1...

- And finally, Andrew Langille discusses the need for better labour market data to inform Canadian public policy.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Not surprisingly, plenty of commentators have weighed in on the latest set of Senate scandals engulfing Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Nigel Wright and Stephen Harper among others. Diane Francis takes the opportunity to point out that the Senate is an institutional anachronism (a point with which I of course agree). Murray Mandryk notes that the Cons' story involves the belief that their clan can do no wrong, Chantal Hebert sees the Cons having simply changed the party name in the Liberal culture of entitlement they once claimed to despise, while Andrew Coyne views the latest incidents as an example of the Cons' general distaste for audits and other accountability mechanisms. And Tabatha Southey nicely details just how many laughable claims one would have to believe in order to take the Cons' side in defending their Senate abuses.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry points out that as far as Jim Flaherty is concerned, expensive, publicly-funded self-promotion is the new accountability.

- Don Lenihan theorizes that the Cons would be well-positioned to create a sustainable development charter if they wanted to. But "if they wanted to" is a rather important qualification - particularly given that they seem to have put J. Wellington Wimpy in charge of the sales pitch for environmental action ("I'd gladly regulate them next decade for an increase in profits today!")

- Nathan VanderKlippe writes that TransCanada has roughly matched the Cons' level of interest in dealing constructively with anybody who raises concerns about pipelines - which serves as one of the main reasons why it's run into so much opposition. And Esther Hsieh contrasts the massive public benefits provided by Norway's resource development plan against the glaring lack of a development strategy in Canada.

- Jason Kenney makes it abundantly clear that family-class immigrants in less-than-wealthy families aren't welcome in his country - singling out for particular scorn anybody who "(goes) back to being poor" after being joined by family in Canada.

- Finally, Robyn Benson makes the case for engagement - on whatever level possible - as a key to reaching positive outcomes within unions and other organizations.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Paul Krugman draws a much-needed connection between austerity politics and Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine:

What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein’s book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever — but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what’s going on in Europe in particular.

And the lineage goes back even further. Two and a half years ago Mike Konczal reminded us of a classic 1943 (!) essay by Michal Kalecki, who suggested that business interests hate Keynesian economics because they fear that it might work — and in so doing mean that politicians would no longer have to abase themselves before businessmen in the name of preserving confidence. This is pretty close to the argument that we must have austerity, because stimulus might remove the incentive for structural reform that, you guessed it, gives businesses the confidence they need before deigning to produce recovery.

And sure enough, in my inbox this morning I see a piece more or less deploring the early signs of success for Abenomics: Abenomics is working — but it had better not work too well. Because if it works, how will we get structural reform?

So one way to see the drive for austerity is as an application of a sort of reverse Hippocratic oath: “First, do nothing to mitigate harm”. For the people must suffer if neoliberal reforms are to prosper.

- Meanwhile, Esther Hsieh writes that Norway's rejection of laissez-faire economics has resulted in the most productive economy on the planet - with social support for skilled workers (such as universal child care) and income equality serving as key drivers of that economic success. And the Canadian Institute for Health Information observes that universal public health care serves as an important form of income equalization in Canada.

- Michael Byers and Purple Library Guy each offer an assessment of the lessons to be drawn from British Columbia's election results. And Alison reminds us what Christy Clark has sounded like when she hasn't been trying to neutralize her party's penchant for environmental destruction.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom recognizes that the problems with Canada's Senate go far beyond Mike Duffy. And Michael Harris notes that the scandal surrounding Duffy includes Stephen Harper and his inner circle (no matter how much they scramble to escape accountability now):

But we do not live in a better world, we live in this one. Stephen Harper’s inclination is to make up the rules as he goes along. I for one do not see this as loyalty to his minions, but rather as a show of power. When, for example, the ethics commissioner has caught a cabinet minister or two in a breach of the rules, the PM has been known to simply dismiss the finding. The cases of Christian Paradis and Jim Flaherty come to mind.

So Harper’s initial instinct was to save Duffy. He began that process by taking the public on a mind-numbing sojourn into the rules and regulations of the Senate. He used the escape clause of the Deloitte audit, that by Senate definition, knowing where you live is a brain-twister. And he has never had a problem dismissing the ethical part of any problem if it collided with his agenda. Look what he did to Kevin Page for the high crime of outing the PM’s lie over the cost of the F-35s.

But dry-cleaning Duffy quickly turned into a sticky proposition. For one thing, this one has gone right up the nose of the public and people are gagging. And then there are those two mutually exclusive stories about how the senator’s debts were paid off.

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One enduring question is this: Why did Nigel Wright bail out Mike Duffy before the sharp pencil boys from Deloitte had even finished their damning audit?

But there is an even bigger issue. If Stephen Harper doesn’t see anything wrong with his chief of staff making a $90,000 gift to a sitting Conservative senator engulfed in scandal, is there anything he wouldn’t endorse for partisan gain?

Friday Morning Links

This and that to end your week.

- Bruce Campbell argues that Alberta should take a lesson from Norway on how to manage natural resources - and plenty of other provinces could stand to take notes as well:

The Norwegian government owns 80 per cent of petroleum production, and retains roughly 85 per cent of the net petroleum revenues mainly through a 78-per-cent company tax and through direct access mechanisms.

In Alberta and Canada, ownership and control have been controversial issues. At present, virtually the entire industry is owned by foreign and domestic private interests, which have taken the lion’s share of the petroleum wealth.

According to one estimate, the Alberta government has averaged just 9 per cent of the economic rent from the oilsands over the last 15 years, and the federal government now takes (after tax breaks) a paltry 7 per cent of oil company revenues through the general corporate income tax.

The Norwegian government has been very effective in distributing the benefits of oil wealth both regionally and throughout its population, thanks to a generous social welfare system, an equitable labour relations system and a progressive tax system. It has maintained one of the lowest levels of income inequality in the world.

Inequitable petrodollar recycling mechanisms explain, in large part, why inequality is substantially higher in Alberta than the Canadian average (which in turn is among the highest in the OECD), and why it has grown dramatically over the last decade.

- But of course, that won't be happening among the premiers more interested in serving as wholly-owned subsidiaries of oil barons than advancing any issue which might actually affect their own province.

- Thomas Walkom sees the latest set of Idle No More protests as a qualified success, while Barbara Yaffe identifies John Duncan and the Cons' handling of First Nation issued as an unmitigated failure. And Emma Teitel introduces some new language to discuss the reflexive anti-activist tendency of some columnists - though I think we may be best off contrasting "idle no more" against "curmudgeonly forever".

- Finally, Chris Sorenson and Charlie Gillis discuss the new underclass of young Canadians - as plenty of citizens who took exactly the path suggested for them (featuring higher education at ballooning prices) are now stuck with few job prospects.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson's final report on Norway's highly successful management of its oil resources puts Canada's current philosophy to the test:

Seen through this lens, how is Canada doing? Abysmally...:

1. Dependency. Even with our vast oil wealth, Canada currently relies on other countries for about 50 per cent of our supply -- so-called "unethical oil" from the volatile Middle East. Proposals to pipe unrefined bitumen from western Canada to Asia will increase this dangerous dependence since Alberta will have to import vast amounts of condensate from the Middle East to dilute thick bitumen enough for pipeline transport.

2. Staying in the red. Alberta has been unable to balance the books since 2007, burning through $17.7 billion of past oil wealth, with another $3 billion deficit forecast for the coming budget.

3. Draining at full tilt. Labour and production costs are through the roof, at least until the next employment bust. Both the Alberta Federation of Labour and the late premier Peter Lougheed have both called for slower (sic) the pace of oil sands growth. Ten proposed upgrades have been cancelled since the 2007 recession, replaced instead with pipeline proposals for unprocessed diluted bitumen. With resource values rising relative to global currencies, what's the rush?

4. Getting global black eye. The oil sands have such a credibility problem the Alberta government spends $25 million a year countering "baseless" criticism from environmental groups. 

 - Ken Coran and Ken Lewenza highlight the value of allowing unions and management to reach deals that make sense for a particular workplace, rather than having decrees issued from on high. But sadly, the only negotiations the McGuinty Libs seem prepared to accept are their own dealings with Tim Hudak and his party to eliminate workers' right to bargain collectively.

- Thomas Walkom describes the XL Beef E. coli disaster as the Harper Cons' Walkerton moment - and it would indeed seem to be about time to recognize the practical consequences of ineffective regulation. But Postmedia reports that the Cons aren't done making matters worse - planning instead to cut food safety programs by tens of millions of dollars more.

- Finally, Polly Toynbee discusses Ed Miliband's new "One Nation Labour" theme - with a particular focus on how it serves to promote cooperation rather than competition in public services:

Watch [the Conservatives] writhe as One Nation Labour encapsulates everything divisive they do, from Cameron's tax bonus for millionaires to his cruellest cuts for the disabled. Divide and rule is the Cameron hallmark, north against south, the in-work against the workless, private against public employees, young against old, exam-passers versus plebs. How clever to pilfer a Tory phrase with no intention of blurring boundaries or triangulating into Tory turf.

Subtlety is Miliband's style. So when he said to voters he understood "why you turned away from Labour", that was enough, everyone knows the reasons why. Of Cameron, he said he understood "why people gave him the benefit of the doubt" – but then he walloped him from here to kingdom come for inflicting all this pain to cut the deficit only to send it soaring higher than ever.

His words on the NHS brought the hall to its feet. A One Nation NHS means repealing the act that forces hospital to compete with hospital, instead of co-operating in common cause. Banks, businesses, schools, jobs – that One Nation phrase will suit everything Labour needs to say. It stands for the squeezed middle as well as the poor.