Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress digs into Statistics Canada's findings about precarious work in Canada, highlighting the connection between temporary work and subpar pay and working conditions:

According to a report by Statistics Canada, published Tuesday, the percentage of Canadian workers hired on temporary contracts increased from 11.8% in 1998 to 13% in 2018 — faster than the growth of permanent jobs over the last 20 years.

Those temporary jobs typically offer lower wages, fewer benefits and lower rates of unionization. Last year, the report notes, temporary employees earned on average $21.80 per hour, while permanent employees earned $27.71 per hour.
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Data by Statistics Canada indicate that since the federal Liberals took office in 2015, the percentage of temporary workers remained between 13.3% and 13.7%. 

But this national trend hasn’t irked the federal government. Back in 2016, Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau said Canadian workers “have to accept” short-term and precarious employment.

However, as McQuarrie wrote in the Globe and Mail: “It’s a mistake to treat this as a norm we have to accept.”

- Karl Nerenberg points out how billions of dollars dumped into the criminal justice system would be far better spent improving the social conditions which actually cause crime. And Richard Florida discusses new research showing how children are far less healthy if they face lengthy commutes to school.

- Bill McKibben notes that we've wasted any time we had to spare in averting a climate breakdown, and need to start electing leaders committed to immediately dealing with the carbon crisis. Devon Rowcliffe writes about the need for Jagmeet Singh to become the top choice for voters looking for a just transition to a clean energy economy - including by challenging fossil fuel subsidies at the provincial level. And Eliza Barclay and Jag Bhalla offer responses to just a dozen of the most common (and painful) excuses to delay climate action.

- Meanwhile, Jason Warick reports on a study showing the Saskatchewan Party's pitiful record on environmental conservation. John Paul Tasker notes that Andrew Scheer's idea of energy policy is to force through pipelines that even the oil industry doesn't want. And Clare Hennig reports on a Senate committee's decision to ignore the votes of elected officials to try to push oil shipments along the B.C. coast.

- Finally, Adaner Usmani discusses how class struggle is necessary for the preservation of democracy. And Ezra Klein points out the increasing recognition among U.S. Democrats that counterweights to corporate power are essential to both political success and good governance.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Murray highlights what climate protests have accomplished so far, while emphasizing the need to turn activism into policy change over the objections of the Very Serious People determined to dismiss climate action as impractical. And Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos discuss how a Green New Deal can lead toward an updated set of fundamental freedoms. 

- Meanwhile, Marc Lee points out that instead of believe Andrew Scheer and Jason Kenney's bluster for a second, British Columbians should be aware that their increased gas prices are mostly the result of corporate profiteering - offering all the more incentive to avoid being at the mercy of a greedy fossil fuel sector.

- Richard Florida weighs in on the economic benefits of improved minimum wages, including positive wage spillover effects. And as a reminder of the health implications of a more fair economic system, a new NBER paper shows that higher minimum wages also correlate to reductions in suicides.

- But Robert Reich writes that the U.S.' political system has instead been used to enrich (and bail out) the wealthy few using the limited resources of the many.

- Finally, Geoff Dembicki calls out Scheer, Maxime Bernier and the other right-wing politicians who are try to tap into veins of hate in the name of self-aggrandizement.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Jennifer Pagliaro and David Rider report on Toronto's longstanding internal knowledge of the costs of austerity. And Ed Conway highlights a new budget showing the austerity gap in the UK - though as the Equality Trust points out, that could be made up with a fraction of the wealth hoarded by by the UK's richest 1,000 people.

- Meanwhile, Richard Vize writes about the UK's increasing infant mortality rates caused by needless cuts to social benefits and services. Maia Szalavitz examines the connection between more severe inequality and higher homicide rates. And Richard Florida notes that geographic inequality in the U.S. is only getting worse with time.

- Brooke Harrington comments on the lack of any consequences attached to bad behaviour by the wealthiest Americans.

- Peter Dietsch and Michael Guenco suggest a few first steps to make sure that Canada collects a fair share of revenue from the people who have the most wealth to contribute.

- Finally, Matthew Yglesias discusses how proportional representation could solve the most glaring problems with the U.S.' decaying political system.

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.
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...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.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Peter Goodman discusses how austerity has changed society for the worse in the UK:

For a nation with a storied history of public largess, the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has delivered a monumental shift in British life. A wave of austerity has yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life.
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By 2020, reductions already set in motion will produce cuts to British social welfare programs exceeding $36 billion a year compared with a decade earlier, or more than $900 annually for every working-age person in the country, according to a report from the Center for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University. In Liverpool, the losses will reach $1,200 a year per working-age person, the study says.
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But the reality at hand is dominated by worries that Britain’s pending departure from the European Union — Brexit, as it is known — will depress growth for years to come. Though every major economy on earth has been expanding lately, Britain’s barely grew during the first three months of 2018. The unemployment rate sits just above 4 percent — its lowest level since 1975 — yet most wages remain lower than a decade ago, after accounting for rising prices.
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In the blue-collar reaches of northern England, in places like Liverpool, modern history tends to be told in the cadence of lamentation, as the story of one indignity after another. In these communities, Mrs. Thatcher’s name is an epithet, and austerity is the latest villain: London bankers concocted a financial crisis, multiplying their wealth through reckless gambling; then London politicians used budget deficits as an excuse to cut spending on the poor while handing tax cuts to corporations. Robin Hood, reversed. 

- Noelle Sullivan and Lisa Ann Richey offer a reminder that we won't successfully fight poverty by throwing money at self-serving corporate public relations campaigns. And LA Kouffman comments on the need for protest and other collective activism to push for social change.

- Jim Stanford examines the spread of precarious work in Australia, with less than half of current jobs meeting a basic definition of "standard" secure work. And Tracey Warren argues that any discussion about work-life balance needs to take into account the individual effects of poverty-level wages.

- Finally, Richard Florida warns Ontario voters about the economic risks of allowing Doug Ford to tear down progress in the name of know-nothing populism.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- The Canadian Press reports on new research showing how wealth shocks at any level of income or wealth are associated with a higher risk of mortality:

Middle-aged Americans who experienced a sudden, large economic blow were more likely to die during the following years than those who didn't. The heightened danger of death after a devastating loss, which researchers called a "wealth shock," crossed socio-economic lines, affecting people no matter how much money they had to start.

The analysis of nearly 9,000 people's experiences underscores well-known connections between money and well-being, with prior studies linking lower incomes and rising income inequality with more chronic disease and shorter life expectancy.
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About 1 in 4 people in the study had a wealth shock, which researchers defined as a loss of 75 per cent or more in net worth over two years. The average loss was about $100,000.

That could include a drop in the value of investments or realized losses like a home foreclosure. Some shocks happened during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Others happened before or after. No matter what was going on in the greater U.S. economy, a wealth shock still increased the chance of dying.

- And on a related note, Richard Florida points out that Americans are much more anxious and dissatisfied than they were just under a decade ago.

- Sarah Anderson discusses the cumulative dangers of poverty and climate change in causing the spread of pest-borne diseases. And Canada Without Poverty examines the stresses of surviving on a low income - including the lack of access to basic dental care which many Canadians take for granted.

- Meanwhile, Chris Dillow highlights the danger of relying on a single indicator of inequality which may mask the breadth and depth of poverty.

- Finally, the Star's editorial board writes that Canada's access-to-information system is serving as a barrier to accountability, rather than a mechanism to facilitate oversight.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Matthew Yglesias offers his take on how to strengthen the U.S.' economy through full employment and improved wage and family benefits. And Richard Florida discusses how everybody can benefit if an increasingly important service sector starts to provide higher wages and better work:

The only way to close Canada’s yawning economic divide and rebuild the middle class is to upgrade the wages and working conditions of Canada’s service workers.

Increasing the minimum wage, as Ontario is doing, is an important first step. And, it is important to link the minimum wage to the steep variation in the cost of living across cities: $15 an hour buys a lot less in expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver than in does in many smaller places. Indeed, nearly half of Canada’s low-paid service workers are concentrated in the nation’s five largest metros — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. But it is only a first step.

The real key is to upgrade the millions of low-wage service jobs that workers across Canada toil in. We fail as a society if 40 per cent of Canada’s workforce is condemned to toil in such low-wage precarious jobs.
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It has been done before. During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Canada and other advanced nations turned low wage manufacturing work into middle-class family supporting work. Henry Ford famously initiated his $5 a day pay policy to enable blue collar workers to purchase the cars they were making on the assembly line.

The government created new labour laws that enabled workers to form unions and bargain collectively enabling blue-collar wages to rise higher. Manufacturing companies developed strategies to involve more high-paid blue-collar workers in efforts to improve quality, productivity and ultimately profits, creating a win-win cycle. The same can be done for low-wage service work, the analog of blue-collar factory work today.

- Hugh Muir discusses how only the wealthy few actually benefit from selectively open borders - including the ability to purchase citizenship or immigration rights when it becomes convenient.

- Amanda Carver writes about the importance of using evidence-based approaches to solving homelessness - including the Housing First model that has proven successful. Jordan Press writes that the Trudeau Libs are willing to talk about a right to housing, but not to back it up with any meaningful steps to actually provide it. The Star's editorial board comments on how the growing use of food banks to paper over the unmanageable cost of rent highlights the need for a housing benefit. And Robert Booth reports on new research showing how housing has become unaffordable for young workers in the UK.

- Mike De Souza highlights how the same National Energy Board which has shrouded pipeline approvals in secrecy has been entirely reckless with the personal information of journalists trying to report on its activity. And Justin Gillis discusses how human behaviour is the great unknown in trying to project the damage to be done by climate change.

- Finally, Gary Mason writes that John Horgan's NDP is finally bringing British Columbia into the 21st century with effective campaign finance rules - leaving Saskatchewan as the only laggard. And Bob Mackin's slightly dated report on the B.C. Libs' advertising spending is worth noting again, as it shows the party which is now set to scream bloody murder over public financing for political parties had no scruples whatsoever about using similar amounts of public money solely for its own self-promotion.