Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Mason weighs in on how income and wealth inequality spill over into every corner of a person's life:

It is very possible to be poor in the 21st-century welfare state. One in five children lives in poverty, and this decade will see the first rise in absolute poverty in a generation. For decade after decade, post-war governments have chipped away at the principle of social insurance: you pay your stamps, you get your cash benefits as of right. The result is a world-class health system struggling to deal with large-scale, growing ill health determined by poverty. Even if we all live longer, the poor live shorter lives and will spend decades in disability.

So what would a modern Beveridge write? I think he would reiterate that “want” – or poverty – is the basic evil that, if you don’t abolish, drags down all your attempts at making people healthier or better educated. It’s very obvious – to anybody who has been near a food bank, or a women’s refuge, or a probation office – that “want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness” still exist, at disgraceful levels, and in highly concentrated pockets. A 16-year gap in healthy life expectancy between Blackpool and Wokingham – towns a three-hour journey apart – would shock us into action if we really cared about it.

And here’s why we should care: health inequality follows a clear gradient path. If you break down the population into 5% chunks according to income, every one of these chunks is healthier than the one below them. The editor, on average, dies of heart attack later than the deputy editor. This is one of the clearest findings of Marmot’s and other epidemiological research.

So inequality is not just about rich and poor – it’s about the tilted playing field of life, and how to stop it getting steeper.

- And Paul Buchheit duly challenges the spin that poverty has any meaningful connection to laziness, rather than being primarily the result of systematic disadvantages which often can't be overcome by any amount of hard work.

- Ashley Csanady reports on one long-overdue improvement in working conditions in Ontario, as employers are finally being restricted from taking a cut of workers' tips. But Martin Regg Cohn highlights how employers are still trying to wriggle out of their obligations, with the province's new pension plan serving as the latest example.

- Joby Warrick discusses the connection between corporate-funded denialism and the U.S.' polarization on climate change. But Bruce Cheadle reports that the Libs are throwing all of their promised climate research dollars into a corporate-led pool.

- Meanwhile, Lauren McCauley reports on the activists defying a ban to be heard around the Paris climate change conference. And Naomi Klein reminds us of the lives at stake as we decide whether our planet is worth saving.

- Finally, Carol Goar writes about the dangers of a bandwagon effect toward war in the absence of any accurate information as to what we're getting into.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Barbara Tasch writes about the IMF's latest research on growing inequality in developing and developed countries alike. And Michael Krassa and Benjamin Radcliff study the impact an improved minimum wage can have on economic well-being:

Simply stated, as the minimum wage increases, the economic wellbeing of the national population rises. Statistically speaking this relationship is a strong one, significant at the .001 level.
...
Here’s the bottom line: Regardless of the size of a country's economy, its current economic situation, or the time frame chosen, people lead better lives as the minimum wage increases.

Although correlation does not prove causation, the evidence we have assembled strongly suggests that higher minimum wages do indeed work to the financial betterment of society as a whole. Even if some low-wage jobs disappear as minimum wages rise, the end result is greater economic security and prosperity overall for people who live and work in countries with the higher minimums.

- Daniel Angster points out Barack Obama's efforts to make sure that big money in U.S. politics can be traced back to its origins. But David Cay Johnston discusses how Koch-funded judges are going out of their way to prevent any investigation into Scott Walker's illegal coordination with corporate actors. And the CP reports that corporations which made illegal donations to Con Peter Penashue are being let off without meaningful consequences.

- Meanwhile, Matt McClure exposes the massive amounts of corporate taxes left uncollected in Alberta before the business-dominated PCs finally lost power.

- Stephanie Levitz reports that the Cons' cuts have resulted in Canada breaking its promises to accept refugees. And Antonia Zerbisias writes that neither newly-arrived immigrants nor life-long Canadians can feel safe in due to the introduction of two-tiered citizenship.

- Finally, Paul Mason offers an intriguing look at how our economy may shift away from our current model of corporate-dominated capitalism to a model where shared information and abundance serves as a platform for increased individual freedom.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andrew Jackson reviews Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, while Paul Mason offers a useful summary. And David Atkins applies its most important lesson in response to some typical right-wing spin prioritizing assets over incomes:

(I)nstead of doing something about radical inequality, the new neoliberal answer is to give the 44% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck more savings vehicles and incentives to stash away money to pay for those increasingly impossibly high mortgage and tuition costs.

As the inequality problem becomes more and more severe and as Piketty's arguments gain increasing influence, look for all the neoliberal asset addicts to make ever more preposterous arguments to defend incentivizing boosting assets over boosting wages.

It's all they know, and doing anything else would turn their worlds inside-out and hurt all their very asset-heavy bank accounts.

- Meanwhile, David Dayen calls out the financial sector's attempt to start up another mortgage securitization scheme comparable to the one which caused the 2008 economic meltdown - this time taking all the profits for themselves while enjoying a direct government bailout mechanism.

- Josh Eidelson discusses how the U.S.' laws are set up to squelch any effort to organize workers - with ineffective protection for organization to address wages and working conditions, and none whatsoever for any other type of activity. But Marc Ames discusses how corporate collusion to drive down wages is all too often met with no significant consequences - with Silicon Valley serving as the latest example.

- Paul McLeod reports on the stunning number of requests for Canadians' personal information from telecoms, and I'm not sure which is more appalling: the 1,194,000 requests made annually, or the fact that such indiscriminate requests are being granted the majority of the time (with 785,000 individuals' information disclosed). And the CP follows up to point out that even those numbers only scratch the surface of what's being disclosed behind the scenes.

- Finally, Jim Stanford writes that the Cons' grudging movement to address the abuse of temporary foreign workers may have arisen out of a fault line within their party:

For sure, evidence had been mounting for years that the program was out of control. Migrant employment rose 140 per cent between 2005 and 2012. One in every five net new paid jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2012 was filled by a migrant worker – a startling reliance on what was supposed to be a “last resort” program. Even the business-friendly C.D. Howe Institute confirmed that the program has pushed up unemployment, including in Alberta.

But this evidence has been around for years, as have anecdotes about employers hiring migrants to do jobs Canadians are clearly capable of filling. The hospitality sector alone had 45,000 guest workers on the roll by 2012, with migrants capturing 40 per cent of net new positions since 2009. How many jobs are there in hotels and restaurants that Canadians truly cannot perform? Almost none – and the government has always known that.
...
Many middle-class Canadians know their children need fast-food jobs, given the lousy state of the youth job market. To have even those jobs placed out of reach by an immigration strategy aimed explicitly at suppressing wages fuels resentment that transcends party lines. That’s what the Conservatives sensed, and so Mr. Kenney acted.
...
Of course, there is a principled solution to Mr. Kenney’s TFW dilemma, advocated nicely in a recent column by The Globe’s Doug Saunders: Increase permanent immigration and give these workers the same rights the rest of us enjoy. But that wouldn’t win favour from either of the two constituencies worried about here: business lobbyists who want cheap labour and social conservatives who want less immigration. Which is why it won’t happen.