Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan highlights the fact that while the Cons fight for ever more inequality, even business groups are noting the risks of that direction:

That (the Conference Board of Canada and the International Monetary Fund) are worried should be a signal to Canada’s private sector leaders: pay attention to the compensation gap between your lowest paid worker and that of the CEO, because those differences may tell us a lot about the mess we’re in. After all, businesses rely on the rising purchasing power of the many, not the few, to deliver growth and profits.

But income inequality has grown more rapidly in Canada than in the U.S. lately, according to the Conference Board report. Among 32 OECD nations, Canada has gone from better-than-average to worse-than-average levels of inequality since the mid 1990s, slumping from 14th to 22nd place, despite a decade of robust economic growth and record levels of job creation. Meanwhile, 15 OECD nations -- including peers like Norway and the U.K. -- were reducing income inequality.

Its earlier report noted: “[H]igh inequality can diminish economic growth if it means that the country is not fully using the skills and capabilities of all its citizens or if it undermines social cohesion, leading to increased social tensions. Second, high inequality raises a moral question about fairness and social justice.”

The links between rising inequality, halting economic growth and increasing volatility are getting harder to ignore.

- Meanwhile, Erin Weir concisely sets out corporate Canada's cash hoarding over the past couple of decades - which thoroughly calls into question the theory that cutting corporate taxes will spur investments.

- Impolitical rightly points out the Cons' ridiculous witness list in attempting to conduct a committee show trial against the CBC - with the naming of Federal Court Justice Richard Boivin ranking as a particularly banana-republican tactic.

- Alison chronicles the trade-deal race to the bottom when it comes to ensuring that the benefits of resource development are enjoyed by the resource's owners. Which is to say that we may need to push Greg Selinger and his Manitoba NDP to change positions and stop the current spread of the TILMA.

- Finally, SGEU unveils a fairly brilliant take on the Wall government's plans for Saskatchewan:

New column day

Here, expanding on the hostile labour environment that's developing as federal and provincial governments alike use back-to-work legislation as a pre-emptive attack on workers.

For further reading (which should be familiar to those who read the blog regularly):

- Ryan McGreal's "revenge egalitarianism" concept earns a mention in the column, and for those who haven't read it yet his general discussion is also well worth a look.

- Andrew Jackson points out the research showing a link between decreased unionization and increased inequality, including this summary with a similar theme to the column:

The path from strong unions to greater equality among non union workers likely runs through two channels. The first is fear, non union employers in a strong union environment will pay higher wages to lower paid workers in order to avoid unionization. The second and likely stronger channel is norms. Strong unions establish norms of fair wage differences between management and workers and between groups of workers which spill over into the non union sector.

- And the theme of the column is developed from a couple of my earlier posts on the Canada Post strike/lockout.

Heartening

I'll be hoping to see the site expand from its current content-distribution format to build links between concerned citizens as well. But for those who haven't yet found their way to SGEU's If You Love Saskatchewan site, stop by and lend some heart to the effort to save and strengthen our province's public services.

(Edit: fixed labels.)