Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Liz Farmer discusses the growing body of evidence showing that high-end tax cuts do nothing to build the economy for anybody but the few privileged beneficiaries. And Stephen Kimber writes about the billions of dollars Canada loses to tax evasion every year, while calling out the "taxpayer" lobby groups who are happy to leave the public on the hook for that loss. 

- Heather Stewart weighs on how increased automation stands to exacerbate inequality both between capital and labour, and within the workforce itself. And Matthew Wright comments on the effect of social capital as one of the means by which inequality of opportunity perpetuates itself:

The argument that economic inequality decreases a society’s overall stock of social capital is not new. However, scholars have only recently turned to the question of whether inequality also polarizes people along class lines in terms of standard social capital indicators: level of engagement in ‘civic’ activities, volunteering, trust in other people, and so on. To find out, I use the Monitoring the Future (MtF) Survey series, a nationally-representative survey of roughly 16,000 high school seniors conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research every year since 1976. These are combined with contextual information about economic inequality – the ubiquitous ‘Gini index’ running from perfect equality (scored ‘0’) to perfect inequality (scored ‘1’) for each survey year.

The pattern is both unmistakable and as expected. Figures 1 and 2 plot the average level of social capital on several common indicators against national-level Gini. Respondents are divided into three equally-sized groups according to parental education, which is the best available indicator of socio-economic ‘class’ in these data. The increased vertical spread between these groups moving from left (most unequal) to right (most equal) indicates disproportionate social capital accruing to the better-off. 
...
There is strong evidence that socio-economic inequality powerfully shapes social capital disparities between rich and poor.  The obvious prescription is reduced inequality, or as Ric Uslaner puts it ‘don’t get rich, get equal’. That said, even if one accepts this there are many ways one might try to ‘get equal’, and we still know relatively little about what kinds of resource inequalities really matter. Better-off parents spend relatively more time with and resources on, their children, and could help drive the growing social capital disparities observed.  Having relatively better-off parents also provides a more favorable institutional ‘opportunity structure’ in terms of school quality, extracurriculars, community-service opportunities, and even softer factors such as school pride and solidarity. Understanding whether and how these factors play into the relationship between inequality and social capital is necessary if progress is to be made.

- Leigh Phillips nicely sets out the arguments for and against a basic income - while noting that the potential for alliances between progressive and market-oriented supporters may also hint at some of the dangers of pushing a basic income at the expense of other social justice measures. 

- Tom Blackwell takes a look at the prospect that newly-appointed Minister of Health Jane Philpott might be able to use her position to deal with health inequality. And Cliff offers the eminently reasonable suggestion that the federal government can start in reducing poverty and inequality alike by ensuring that citizens under its jurisdiction have at least the same level of funding for public services like education as their compatriots under provincial jurisdiction.

- Finally, Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby comment on the importance of access to information (along with its sorry state in Canada).

[Edit: fixed link as per comments.]

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Stephen Kimber makes the case for a financial transactions tax in Atlantic Business:

(W)hat can supposedly sovereign nations do when individual governments seem powerless in the face of rampant globalization and footloose capital?

Well, they could get together to create an international public counter-balance to out-of-whack corporate power and – at the least – begin to mitigate some of the worst effects of unfettered globalization.

Agreeing to a locally adopted, globally implemented financial transactions tax would be a smart start.

The idea – popularly known as the Robin Hood tax – originated with Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin, who pitched a variation of the tax following the 1990s Asian financial crisis. Not surprisingly, his proposal has only gained traction in the wake of the 2008 global meltdown.

The miniscule tax – averaging no more than 0.05 per cent – would be tacked on to the cost of buying and selling all stocks, bonds, mutual funds, currencies, derivatives, futures, options, etc… (but not ordinary consumer transactions like credit card purchases, deposits and withdrawals).

Besides serving as a (probably only slight) brake on speculative trading, such a tax would have the more important impact of raising up to $400 billion a year.

Some of the revenue raised through the tax could be used to, in effect, either force banks to fund their own future bailouts or help underwrite economic recoveries. The rest could be put to all sorts of public goods at home and abroad, like maintaining and improving public services, fighting climate change, reducing world hunger … or some combination of the above.

- Meanwhile, Tabatha Southey's take on the Republican convention is particularly apt in calling out the deception behind small-business rhetoric:

I plan on coupling that knowledge with what I learned at the rest of the Republican convention, which is that there’s no problem that cannot be solved by opening a small business.

Unemployed? Open a small business. Underpaid? Open a small business.

Can’t afford another baby? Open a small business. Have an autistic child? Open a small business.

In a convention markedly devoid of specifics, at least there was that. I came away so hopeful: If my car won’t start, I’ll open a small business. I‘m sure a dab of small business will arrest a run appearing in my tights. Overwhip that cream? Just add a splash of small business. Syria needs more small businesses.

And every successful person at that convention could give you the reason for their success – it was born of a small business. Even though that small business may have been started three generations ago, and might have been an oil well.

I have no objection to big business, but small business was put forward at the convention the same way people always show you the baby version of any ugly-ass species of animal they want you to love.

Never mind the fact that most people aren’t in the financial position to open a small business. Or aren’t suited to run their own businesses. Or that half of all small businesses fail in their first five years.

- Luisa D'Amato writes that for all the attention paid to micro-targeting and robo-calling as some parties' preferred means of delivering a message to voters, the NDP's by-election victory in Kitchener-Waterloo can be traced in no small part to personal contact with constituents.

- Finally, after of plenty of speculation as to who might run for the NDP in Calgary Centre, Brian Malkinson has thrown his hat into the ring. And it took no time at all for environmental lawyer Murray Rankin to step up in pursuit of the nomination to succeed Denise Savoie in Victoria.