Tuesday Afternoon Links

 This and that for your Tuesday reading. 

- Olufemi Taiwo discusses how the political and corporate elite have declared that consequences for bad decisions will apply only to the plebes - even as events make clear that's not a viable strategy. And Rachel Louise Ensign and James Benedict point out the fifteen-digit wealth stash in the hands of older Americans - along with the reality that most of it figures to stagnate rather than being transferred or put to any positive use. 

- Natalie Donback reports on the efforts of cities to plan and rehearse for the most predictable climate disasters even as national governments subsidize their causes. And Oliver Milman reports on a new study finding that New Orleans for one will likely be swallowed up by the sea within a matter of decades. 

- Meanwhile, Jack Ewing reports on Costa Rica's success in fostering electric vehicle adoption by ensuring people have ready access to charging infrastructure.  

- Josh Taylor notes that public opposition to data centres is as strong in Australia as in much of the rest of the world. And Robert Walton writes that while the strain from power usage has drawn more attention so far, large data centres can be equally problematic in causing rapid load reductions which aren't accounted for in grid planning. 

- Finally, Erin Weir discusses how Saskatchewan is giving away its potash resources - and indeed incentivizing the shutdown of mines which pay more royalties. 

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. 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Beth Blauer writes about the continuing need for accurate and timely data about COVID-19 as it represent an ongoing threat. And Rachel Bergmans et al. examine the impact of long COVID on Black Americans in particular, while pointing out a few ways to make treatment more effective. 

- Justin Wiltshire examines how higher minimum wages produce massive benefits in increasing pay and reducing inequality, while actually increasing employment levels as well contrary to the corporate spin which is typically taken as gospel. And Andrew Perez, Matthew Cunningham-Cook and David Sirota call out how corporate talking points have been applied in preference to all evidence in explaining inflation, with the result that the policy response has locked in windfall profits at the expense of workers. 

- David Roberts writes that none of the world's largest industries would be profitable if they properly accounted for the natural capital destroyed by their operations. Markham Hislop reports on Alberta's comical level of corporate capture as the regulator theoretically responsible for environmental issues in the resource sector has been ordered to cheerlead and cover up for the companies it's supposed to be regulating, while Robert Ascah warns that the public is being left on the hook for massive cleanup costs while operators ship their profits out of the province. And Paige Parsons reports on the federal investigation which is just starting to address the oilsands tailing leaks hidden from public view by the UCP.  

- Michelle Cyca discusses how residential school denialism is being propagated to excuse the ongoing structural disdvantages imposed on Indigenous peoples. And Dennis Ward reports on the Neskantaga First Nation's multi-decade boil-water advisory as having corroded public trust. 

- Finally, Tim Requarth writes about the growing scientific recognition that alcohol creates a clear detriment to health - and the difficulty spreading that message when a large industry is dedicated to maximizing its sales regardless of the social cost. And Sally Wadyka discusses the connection between ultraprocessed foods and risks to mental health. 

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Arielle Dreher reports on the findings of the U.S.' COVID Crisis Group that the U.S. fell short of the mark in coordinating its COVID-19 response and figures to do so again in future pandemics without improvement. And Leigh MacMillan reports on research showing how COVID produces changes in respiratory tract microbes which can in turn cause additional health problems.  

- Nathan Robinson offers a reminder that the means to end homelessness through a housing guarantee are readily available. And Max Fawcett discusses how the choices we've made around housing - including the expectation that it serve as a risk- and tax-free investment - have led to the lack of homes for far too many. But in case we needed a reminder of the forces working to make matters worse, David Sirota examines Blackstone's plans to extract even more intolerable rents from university students and others in order to goose profit margins. 

- Meanwhile, Christine Boyle and Jim Stanford discuss why Vancouver's abandonment of a living wage is bad economics. 

- Josh Gabbatiss notes that Shell has effectively acknowledged that we can't avoid breaking the 1.5 C barrier without ended new fossil fuel development (though of course it wants to instead count on future carbon removal to excuse further pollution). 

- Finally, Geoff Salomon makes the case for Alberta to save the proceeds of non-renewable resources rather than relying indefinitely on temporary revenue sources. And Doug Johnson writes about the immense potential to integrate solar power into agricultural operations to meet Canada's energy and food needs. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Sarah Bartsch et al. study the costs and benefits of face mask use, and conclude that even without factoring in improvements to public health mask mandates produces positive outcomes from a financial perspective, while Caroline Alphonso reports on Ronald Cohn's exhortation for Ontario not to abandon its protection through masks. Evangelos Oikonomou et al. examine yet another acute and lasting symptom of COVID-19, as it impairs the ability of patients' arteries to increase blood flow. Patrick Martin writes about the growing evidence that the Omicron BA.2 variant may be the most dangerous version yet even as governments stick to a "let 'er rip" policy toward it. 

- Kelly Grotke discusses how Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is an all-too-logical extension of the privatization of political power. And Jillian Kestler-D'Amours calls out Canada's petro-provinces for seeking to use a war rooted in resource politics to line the pockets of the fossil fuel sector. 

- Fiona Harvey discusses the meager response to the IPCC's latest and most urgent warning about a the need to immediately stop our climate breakdown. Emily Chung summarizes the state of fossil fuel subsidies in Canada. And Randy Robinson highlights how the spike in fuel prices is traceable to our avoidable reliance on dirty energy, not to carbon prices which (a) have changed minimally if at all and (b) make up only a small portion of any price as a whole. 

- Tara Carman writes that the choice to stop funding co-operative housing and other non-market options in the 1990s continues to reverberate in a lack of affordable housing today. 

- Finally, Nicole Williams reports on the Ford government's decision to let penalties arising out of the #FluTruxKlan's takeover of Ottawa expire, confirming their deference to white supremacist occupiers at the expense of the people who saw their city taken over. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mickey Djuric reports on Saskatchewan's alarmingly high rate of positive COVID-19 tests as students prepare to return to school. And Heidi Atter reports on the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation's call for mandatory vaccination to minimize the all-too-predictable spread in the school environment. 

- PressProgress notes that Justin Trudeau's campaign message about COVID benefits is based primarily on the CERB and other supports which he had to be pressured to provide in the first place, and which are gone or disappearing even as a fourth wave hits. But while any temporary gains for many workers have been reversed, David Macdonald and Alicia Massie document how the CEO class took advantage of the pandemic to rewrite bonus formulas in their favour. 

- Meanwhile, Joe Ryle makes the case as to how a four-day work week (without loss of pay) could lead to both a reduction in carbon emissions and a healthier environment for workers. 

- The Economist highlights new research showing a strong correlation between resource extraction and political corruption. Paul Krugman highlights the faulty economic assumptions of fossil fuel defenders. And Fitsum Areguy exposes how Canada enabled mining companies profiting from extraction linked to war and human rights abuses in Ethopia.  

- Finally, Jeremy Appel writes about the surveillance and psychological manipulation techniques used by the Canadian military in Afghanistan which are now being turned against the public domestically. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Globe and Mail's editorial board writes that Canada needs to do its part to avert as much of the impending climate breakdown as can be avoided.

- Chris Kennedy rightly points out that Canada's responsibility includes the fossil fuels we're subsidizing for export - encouraging other countries to pollute our planet while shifting the damage off our own books. And Brennan Doherty offers a reminder that the tar sands' pollution levels are increasing.

- Meanwhile, Kate Aronoff comments on the connection between climate policy and resource extraction, while noting that there are severe limits on what can be accomplished merely by substituting the resources we churn through without changing the mindset of exploitation. And Derrick O'Keefe writes about the need to fight against Bolivia's racist coup.

- Finally, Andrew Woodcock reports on research showing that UK Labour's plan to nationalize water, energy and mail would pay for itself within a mere seven years.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Martin Regg Cohn discusses how workers are bearing the brunt of Doug Ford's budget. Joe Light offers a reminder that Donald Trump's populist rhetoric predictably gave way to a tax scheme designed to further enrich CEOs at the expense of everybody else. And Matt Bruenig points out that U.S. workers actually pay relatively high taxes and mandatory payments while receiving paltry benefits compared to other developed countries.

- Meanwhile, Marshall Appelbaum makes the case for public disclosure of the taxes paid by each citizen.

- Noah Smith notes that a growing body of evidence is showing how government intervention is key to economic development - even if that reality never gets acknowledged by laissez-faire zealots.

- Jeff Daniels reports on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' observation that climate delay and denial are the product of privilege and removal from the immediate consequences of neglect.

- Finally, Jerry Dias discusses the choice Alberta voters have between hope and fear. Sharon Riley offers a reminder of the province's continued reliance on one-time resource revenues. And Emily Leedham and Chloe Rockarts write about the future of worker power in Alberta.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mark Olalde writes about the public subsidies being handed to U.S. resource companies who polluted water with toxic waste without having any plan or resources to clean up their messes. And Michael Mann and Bob Ward note that Donald Trump is using Stalinist tactics to try to protect polluters from facing regulation in the public interest. 

- Meanwhile, Tanya Lewis discusses the increasing harm climate breakdown is causing to human health around the globe. And Jennifer Francis reports on Don Kossick's first-hand experience as to how the destruction of climate change causes disproportionate damage to the countries least equipped to respond.

- CBC News reports on the view Canadians share with our counterparts around the world favouring increased taxes on the wealthy to fund improved social programs. And David Macdonald discusses how the Libs' budget falls far short of anything more than symbolism and half-measures.

- Matt Gurney writes that the Trudeau Libs seem bent on inflaming the SNC Lavalin scandal even more than they already have. And today's news that their spin about jobs was entirely fabricated surely can't help matters.

- Finally, the Edmonton Journal writes that Jason Kenney shouldn't be allowed to move the goal posts of acceptable political conduct by manipulating any system that could possibly affect his claimed entitlement to power. And Keith Gerein discusses the gross lack of ethics and integrity he's shown on the Alberta scene alone.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Katrina vanden Heuvel discusses the importance of pushing toward universal child care in order to relieve avoidable stress on families.

- Allison Jones reports that the Ford PCs are only making matters worse by ordering school boards not to hire to fill developing vacancies due to imminent provincial funding restrictions. And Emma Graney reports on the Jason Kenney UCP's similar message that increasing student populations and costs will be met with funding freezes if he gets the chance to impose austerity on Alberta's education system.

- Meanwhile, Kelly Crowe discovers what experts have to say about Ford's arbitrary health reorganization.

- Gil McGowan points out that the UCP's plan to bet on oil booms and corporate giveaways is even more foolish than the similar choices which have busted in the past.

- Finally, Lynn Parramore writes about the connection between economic inequality and opioid-related deaths even when social supports are available.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Chantal Hebert, Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells all weigh in on yesterday's revelations by Jody Wilson-Raybould about the Trudeau PMO's protection racket on behalf of SNC-Lavalin. And Andrew Nikiforuk examines the track record of corruption both from SNC-Lavalin in particular, and within the P3 sector generally.

- Nikiforuk also calls out the continued flaws in the National Energy Board's "reconsideration" of Trans Mountain (required due to another example of the law being broken in the name of corporate interests). And Norm Farrell examines British Columbia's resource selloff which is seeing the resource sector extract more while contributing less in royalties.

- Meanwhile, PressProgress exposes the latest in astroturfing, being a lobby group trying to advocate for credit card fees and bank fees.

- Mike Crawley reports on Doug Ford's move to shutter an agency intended to give citizens a fighting chance in challenging developers on zoning decisions.

- And finally, Fred Imbert reports on Warren Buffett's continued call for a tax system which ensures that he and his billionaire ilk pay a fair share.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mike Konczal notes that a single-minded focus on shareholder wealth - exemplified by today's obsession with stock buybacks - has frozen workers out of any returns from economic development. And Anne Perkins writes about the outrageous gap between the pay of the luckiest CEOs and the rest of the workforce.

- Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias discusses Elizabeth Warren's plan to reconnect businesses to the societies which enable them to make their money, both by mandating social purposes and by ensuring worker representation in decision-making.

- James Wilt examines the public returns on natural resource wealth in Alberta compared to other similar jurisdictions, and finds that Albertans are receiving a woefully insufficient price for oil sands extraction.

- Meanwhile, Crawford Kilian points out the need for massive investments to address climate change - both to do everything in our power to avoid an imminent "hothouse" scenario, and to adapt as best possible to the extent that effort fails.

- Finally, George Monbiot examines how jarring increases in obesity rates over the past few decades can be traced almost entirely to corporate manipulation of consumer habits.

Tuesday Morning LInks

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Wilt examines how Canada lets the corporate sector get away with paying far less than a fair price for our natural resources. And Marc Lee points out the massive subsidies British Columbia has handed to the natural gas industry in particular. 

- Christo Aivalis discusses the need to put public ownership on the table to ensure the availability of necessary services in the face of both business collapses and warped market incentives:

(I)n a recent announcement, Greyhound Canada has decided to end its passenger bus lines west of Ontario, leaving over 400 people unemployed, and numerous communities without access to reliable public transit. The company discontinued the lines because they are unprofitable. This follows the Saskatchewan Party’s dismantling last year of the Saskatchewan Transport Company [sic], which was founded a crown corporation dedicated to delivering public transit regardless of profitability.

The crux of the matter, however, goes beyond the Greyhound news. Indeed, this episode shows that, when it comes to essential services, Canadians cannot depend on the private sector to provide them. This issue along with many others has re-ignited the debate around the role of public ownership in a democratic society. A society in which private capital is predominate cannot be just and democratic. The only solution is to assert democratic priorities over the organization of the economy.
...
...If we are to build a just society, we require a just economy. And while that must include better social programs financed through redistributive taxation, the democratic socialist project is not encompassed by social programs alone; it must concern itself with the democratization of the economy. And while this shouldn’t be done solely through state ownership—worker, community, and consumer cooperatives all being viable mechanisms here—public control will nonetheless be a central plank. In that spirit, let’s make 2019 the year in which the left re-asserts economic democracy as the cornerstone for a better Canada.

- Robson Fletcher takes a look at the composition of the minimum-wage workforce in Alberta. And Katharine Murphy reports on Australia Labour's plan to ensure that temporary workers aren't paid less than the permanent employees they so often replace.

- Richard Florida offers a reminder that it's people already living in poverty who will bear the most severe effects of climate change. And Justine Calma discusses the lives already being lost to extreme heat in New York City.

- Finally, Paula Cocozza writes about the unreasonable expectation of perfection being placed on young adults. And John Lancaster comments on the contrast between the unrealistic assumptions and expectations underlying far too much economic theory, and the reality of the human condition.

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.

New column day

Here, on how Scott Moe's equalization bluster ultimately shows only that he's more interested in political posturing than responsible governance.

For further reading...
- Gregory Beatty reviews how Saskatchewan's effort to remove renewable resource revenue from the equalization formula was abandoned when Brad Wall decided it was inconvenient to remind the public of Stephen Harper's broken promises, while Murray Mandryk also traced the history in connection with the Saskatchewan Party's leadership campaign. And Tim Cook reported on Lorne Calvert's plan for a constitutional challenge when it was raised.
- The Star-Phoenix' editorial board calls for an adult conversation about equalization. And Daniel Beland, Gregory Marchildon, Andre Lecours and Rose Olfert rightly argue that Moe's attempt to undermine the concept of equalization itself falls far short of the mark.
- Finally, the column's reference to the expected returns from a carbon price are based on this policy brief (PDF) from Dale Eisler, Margot Hurlbert, Jim Marshall and Jeremy Rayner.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mariana Mazzucato discusses the dangers of confusing market prices with intrinsic values:

Value has gone from being a category at the core of economic theory, tied to the dynamics of production (the division of labour, changing costs of production), to a subjective category tied to the ‘preferences’ of economic agents. Many ills, such as stagnant real wages, are interpreted in terms of the ‘choices’ that particular agents in the system make, for example unemployment is seen as related to the choice that workers make between working and leisure. And entrepreneurship – the praised motor of capitalism – is seen as a result of such individualized choices rather than of the productive system surrounding entrepreneurs – or, to put it another way, the fruit of a collective effort. At the same time, price has become the indicator of value: as long as a good is bought and sold in the market, it must have value. So rather than a theory of value determining price, it is the theory of price that determines value.

Along with this fundamental shift in the idea of value, a different narrative has taken hold. Focused on wealth creators, risk taking and entrepreneurship, this narrative has seeped into political and public discourse. It is now so rampant that even ‘progressives’ critiquing the system sometimes unintentionally espouse it.
...

Such assumptions about the generation of wealth have become entrenched, and have gone unchallenged. As a result, those who claim to be wealth creators have monopolised the attention of governments with the now well-worn mantra of: give us less tax, less regulation, less state and more market. By losing our ability to recognize the difference between value creation and value extraction, we have made it easier for some to call themselves value creators and in the process extract value. Understanding how the stories about value creation are around us everywhere – even though the category itself is not – is essential for the future viability of capitalism.

To offer real change we must go beyond fixing isolated problems, and develop a framework that allows us to shape a new type of economy: one that will work for the common good. The change has to be profound. It is not enough to redefine GDP to encompass quality-of-life indicators, including measures of happiness, the imputed value of unpaid ‘caring’ labour and free information, education and communication via the Internet. It is also not enough to tax wealth. While such measures are important in themselves, they do not address the greatest challenge: defining and measuring the collective contribution to wealth creation, so that value extraction is less able to pass for value creation.

- Ben Parfitt notes that British Columbia is being severely shortchanged when it comes to deriving public revenue from natural resources. And Simon Enoch and Emily Eaton examine how an oil boom tends to offer little benefit to public coffers and services even in the areas which are supposed to be prospering.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Livesey wonders whether the Libs' Trans Mountain bailout is based on a perception that Canada has signed away any ability to limit the prospect of an oil pipeline to serve Chinese investors. Michael Harris weighs on on the foolishness of paying far above market price for a project which creates massive public risks, while David Climenhaga wonders whether Trudeau plans to be bound by Kinder Morgan's side deal with the anti-worker CLAC. And Mike De Souza reports that two Kinder Morgan executives are being rewarded with $1.5 million bonuses for extracting the deal the company was able to wring out of the federal government.

- Finally, Denise Balkissoon rightly argues that Canada needs to take responsibility for the continued pattern of children being removed from their families - particularly in Indigenous and minority communities.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Alex Himelfarb warns about the dangers of participating in Donald Trump's race to the bottom for public revenues - and the importance of highlighting the value of collective funding for social priorities:

Sure, our tax revenues as a share of the overall economy are lower than they’ve been in over five decades. Yes, government expenditures are lower than they have been since the days before we had public pensions, medicare and mass education. But more tax cuts are still offered up as the best—or even the only—option.

The failure of decades of tax-cutting to yield the promised increases in innovation and productivity has not constrained the willingness of some political parties and governments to treat ever-deeper cuts, especially for businesses and the rich, as indisputably good economic policy. If past cuts didn’t have quite the effect they were meant to, they say, perhaps the cuts just weren’t deep enough. Failed economic ideas don’t die easily.

Clearly, Canadian politicians cannot ignore the implications of tax cuts or other major economic policy changes in the United States. But they would be wise to ask what our neighbour may be giving up with these latest cuts, and where our comparative advantage might really lie. We oughtn’t to assume the benefits of tax cuts or to ignore their costs.
...
Tax cuts never pay for themselves. Invariably, they have real costs: public services are squeezed and opportunities to improve government programs lost, with the consequences falling most heavily on the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and on future generations who of course don’t get to vote.

Ironically, as we weaken government and undermine public services, as wait times go up while access goes down and out-of-pocket costs rise, we increasingly question just what our taxes are buying. Austerity is self-perpetuating.
...
 Decades of austerity, during which we have been asked to view ourselves as primarily taxpayers and consumers rather than as citizens pursuing some common good, have no doubt reshaped our collective view of taxes. So long as taxes are viewed as a burden, or worse, a punishment, rather than as how we operationalize the common good, austerity will continue to blunt the political imagination and limit our sense of what’s possible.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who died just over a year ago, spent the latter part of his career documenting the decline of the collective, the loss of trust in one another and in our governments, the loss of confidence that we can together shape the future. He worried that our collective action problems—those things we can solve only together—have never been more challenging, but that our collective toolkit has been severely weakened by decades of austerity. Rethinking taxes, which are, after all, how we pay for those things we do together because we could never do them at all or as well on our own, will be essential to rebuilding the collective.

We cannot hope even to begin to achieve a just transition to a green economy, or to provide a measure of economic security in an increasingly precarious world, or to reverse growing inequality and persistent poverty if we don’t reconnect taxes to the common good.

- Frances Coppola challenges the mindset that would sacrifice human well-being in the pursuit of balanced government budgets. And Mathew Snow writes about the problems with reliance on the charity of the obscenely wealthy rather than a fair system of social revenue.

- Sophie Hardach examines Thomas Piketty's latest work on the reversal in political orientation based on education. And Branko Milanovic discusses the ongoing (and indeed increasing) relevance of Karl Marx' analysis of capitalism.

- Andrew Nikiforuk observes that government revenues from fossil fuels and other natural resources have been drying up over a period of decades. Stephen Leahy estimates the climate costs of a Trans Mountain expansion at $8.7 billion - without factoring in the added emissions from the end use of any fuel shipped through the pipeline. And Tom Rand notes that the Trans Mountain debate is highlighting the need for everybody to contribute to emission reductions, rather than demanding special dispensations based on the ongoing choice to prioritize oil over other economic options.

- Finally, Edgardo Sepulveda studies the public costs of decades of privatization and politicization of Ontario's power system.

On unequal treatment

With the Trans Mountain pipeline dominating as much news coverage as it has, it's inevitable that we'd see the usual debate as to the relative desirability of different types of economic paths come to the surface. And I'll point out just a couple of the which look to signal a distortion of the actual impact of different economic options in favour of oil (and at the expense of the public interest).

Let's start with Kevin Milligan's Globe and Mail column which has been thrown around repeatedly as a definitive statement that oil is a solution to inequality.

Unfortunately, Milligan's assertion isn't founded in any data addressing inequality in particular, but instead treats overall income as a proxy for equality without apparent explanation. So let's take a look at some data on the point which is supposedly being addressed.

In fact, for the approximate time period used by Milligan, inequality increased slightly in Canada as a whole. And the most obvious increase in terms of both before-tax and after-tax inequality in the broader time period when we've shifted toward reliance on natural resources occurred in Alberta, which Milligan singles out as an example of resource revenue reducing inequality:

The relationship between economy type and inequality does look to be ambiguous. (In particular, Saskatchewan reduced its inequality while also seeing a resource-based boost in incomes in the 1990s and 2000s.)

But there's certainly no basis to suggest that Canada's shift toward a resource economy in recent decades actually reduced inequality as a rule, either on a national scale or within any particular province. And Milligan's position is particularly jaw-dropping in minimizing even the possible results of redistributing the unequal wealth normally found in resource-dependent jurisdictions (including the ones charted above), while instead asking us to assume that "oil = equality!!!".

Meanwhile, the usual foil for resource development is a focus on value-added manufacturing. So let's turn to Kevin Carmichael's admonition that we shouldn't focus unduly on manufacturing jobs when "only about five per cent of employed Canadians work at a factory".

On its own, that's a fair statement. And Carmichael does note that the real implication of the composition of Canada's economy is that we should be more focused on services.

But if we're going to apply that raw-job standard to manufacturing with no allowance for spinoff effects, surely we need to do the same for the resource sector - which leads us to Statistics Canada's data on employment by sector. And that shows manufacturing providing 1,508,942 jobs in 2017 - compared to 199,780 for "Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction" combined.

The effect of singling out manufacturing for minimization is to create more space for the even more obviously-flawed argument to prioritize resource extraction above both competing sectors and the public interest - at a time when we're seeing far too many governments eager to do exactly that.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Wallace calls out the Ontario Libs' track record of consistent cuts to health care and other vital public services (with the exception of election-year promotional items). And Tom Parkin contrasts that pattern against Rachel Notley's protection of public services from the cuts threatened by her competitors.

- Meanwhile, Andre Picard writes about the need to deal with social inequalities in order to bring a long-overdue end to tuberculosis in Canada:

The rate of tuberculosis among the Inuit is 300 times higher than among Canadian-born non-Indigenous Canadians not because they are more susceptible to illness, but because they lack adequate housing, malnutrition is commonplace due to a lack of affordable food and scant employment opportunities mean too many families have trouble making ends meet.

Going forward, we cannot underestimate the size of the challenge. But the way to tackle public-health problems is with precise goals and concrete plans and, to its credit, Ottawa is taking that approach.

...

Dealing with chronic housing problems, punishingly high food prices and financial challenges in the part of Canada with the fastest-growing population is going to require much more money and visionary plans that extend well beyond tackling one disease by 2030.

TB is a symptom of social inequity. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate what reconciliation means in practical terms.

The litmus test for success will not be if the bacterium stops spreading, but whether the conditions that have allowed it to spread for so long disappear.

- Eryk Bagshaw highlights the tens of billions of dollars Australia loses every year by electing not to get full value for resource extraction.

- Finally, Laurin Liu examines the new wage gap facing young workers. And Gaby Hinsliff points out that organized labour and citizen activism is already shaping a gig economy which to date had done little but make work more precarious.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Krugman reminds us of the fraud that is right-wing bleating about deficits:

There have been many “news analysis” pieces asking why Republicans have changed their views on deficit spending. But let’s be serious: Their views haven’t changed at all. They never really cared about debt and deficits; it was a fraud all along. All that has changed is the fact that a Republican now sits in the White House.

How do we know Republicans were never sincere about the deficit? It was obvious, even at the time, to anyone who looked at their fiscal proposals. These proposals always involved giant tax cuts for the wealthy — funny how that worked — offset by savage cuts in social benefits. Even so, assertions that deficits would go down depended entirely on assuming lots of revenue from closing unspecified loopholes and huge savings from cutting unspecified government programs. In other words, even at the peak of their deficit-hawk posturing, all Republicans really had to offer was redistribution from the poor to the rich.

...

Please, let’s not talk about the wrongheadedness of fiscal policy — about imposing austerity in a depressed economy, then running up the deficit when we’re already near full employment — as a problem of “political dysfunction,” or assert that both parties are to blame. Democrats didn’t block stimulus when the economy needed it, or push a tax cut that will worsen inequality and explode the national debt.

No, this is all about Republican bad faith. Everything they said about budgets, every step of the way, was fraudulent. And nobody should believe anything they say now.

- Thomas Walkom discusses how we shouldn't mistake a few peaks in a fluctuating stock market for more a sound economy. And Doug Henwood expands on the fact that the recent downturn reflects the aversion of wealthy shareholders to any wage growth.

- Meanwhile, Torsten Bell highlights the sheer impossibility of overcoming the effects of structural inequality merely by trying to work and save with an average income.

- Martin Lukacs comments on the Trudeau Libs' eagerness to have an anti-science Trump administration lobby for pipelines. Ricardo Acuna challenges some of the spin being used to try to sell the Trans Mountain expansion, while Elizabeth McSheffery fact-checks Scott Moe's early attempt to use the office of the Premier to serve the oil lobby. And Mitchell Anderson questions why British Columbia (and anybody concerned about protecting our natural environment) should pay the price for Alberta's squandering of past oil revenue.

- Justin Mikulka writes about the gap between promises and reality in responding to spills of diluted bitumen.

- Finally, CTV reports on Trajectoire Quebec's research into the high costs of subsidizing the cost of driving.