Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Matt Bruenig highlights Norway's high level of social ownership, with 76% of non-home wealth in public hands in an extremely prosperous country. And Patrick Collinson reports on the latest World Happiness Survey, showing Norway within a group of relatively equal Nordic countries at the very top.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the elements of economic democracy, as well as the need for the NDP to offer voters a clear option of social ownership:

(H)owever important things like Medicare, education, and social security were, they did not constitute the outer boundaries of the social-democratic project. Put another way, what fundamentally distinguished social democracy from liberalism was a conviction of who should control the economy, with liberals saying it should be within largely private control, and social democrats claiming that, through various means, the economy should be controlled publicly.

Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state. This isn’t to say the party is without existing ideas on this front. Andrea Horwath’s Ontario NDP is pledging to re-nationalize Hydro Ontario, and is calling for a reversal of many contracted out public services. Similarly, Niki Ashton’s federal leadership campaign made public ownership a central plank, while Charlie Angus had specific policies that would encourage worker and community-owned enterprises. Still, much more must be done on this front, and as we’ve seen, specific lessons are found within the party’s own recent history.

Jagmeet Singh’s NDP has already made impacts on issues like overhauling our tax system with a view towards a more equitable society. But if the party wants to offer a unambiguous distinction between itself and the ostensibly progressive Trudeau Liberals, a platform predicated on democratizing workplaces and the wider economy is a fantastic start, especially when aligned with provincial NDP sections willing to promote the same objectives in those jurisdictions where they have the most power.

- Richard Poplak points out the outsized (and unaccountable) role played by Export Development Canada in financing questionable corporate activity.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the difficulty injured workers have securing compensation in the face of abusive practices by Ontario employers. Tim Berners-Lee warns against allowing a small number of massive tech firms to dictate access to content online. And Crawford Kilian argues that a public-sector drug manufacturer is a needed cure for the problems with corporate incentives to encourage overprescription.

- Finally, Bob Ramsay writes that Canada's most privileged people are getting more antisocial with time and increased wealth, as charitable contributions as a share of income plummet among those with the most to give.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Noam Scheiber and Ben Casselman comment on the role of corporate consolidation in undermining pay and working conditions. And Meagan Day rebuts the claim that employers can be excused for ignoring not-yet-qualified pools of workers by pointing out that the same people once treated as unqualified are now being hired:

This relaxation of hiring standards is a stinging rebuke to right-wing economists, who for years assured us that the main reason for the stagnant post-recession employment rate was that workers themselves didn’t have the right stuff. Throughout the slow recovery, journalists from major papers made a cottage industry of finding CEOs complaining that their hiring searches were coming up empty. Conservative commentators chalked up high unemployment to a so-called “skills gap”: companies needed more qualified workers, they insisted, than were currently on offer.

But something wasn’t right. If companies really needed qualified workers, why weren’t they raising wages to attract them? Or why weren’t they lowering their qualification standards or offering training to less experienced new hires? If companies really did have jobs that desperately required filling, they would have been working harder to fill them. Some flagged this inconsistency early on. “The reason markets adjust,” wrote management professor Peter Cappelli in 2013, “is because the participants, in this case the employers, eventually learn that they either have to raise their pay or lower their expectations in order to get the workers they need.”

The right wing’s explanation for lagging unemployment rate was a classic supply-side argument. The trouble, the argument went, was that firms weren’t getting what they needed to flourish — in this case, an adequate supply of skilled labor. The Left countered with a demand-side perspective: The reason for high unemployment was that ordinary people, not companies, weren’t getting their needs met. If they had more money in their pockets, ordinary people would increase their spending, demand for goods and services would rise, and that would create more jobs. More jobs means lower unemployment, which means greater bargaining power for the already employed, who won’t have to worry about their position being undermined by vast reserves of cheap labor.

At the time, left economists pointed out that even as employers were supposedly yearning for acceptable candidates but unable to find them, wages weren’t rising. “If employers cannot get the workers they need,” wrote Dean Baker in 2013, “then they raise the wages they offer to pull workers away from other employers. This is how markets work.” The fact that this wasn’t happening, Baker and others argued, was evidence that there wasn’t a real labor shortage, and that the “skills gap” was just another name for corporate whining. Employers were putting up job ads, sure, but they were also being hyper-selective about who they hired — for instance, refusing people with criminal convictions — a good sign they weren’t really in need.

- Meanwhile, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines how decarbonization can and should take into account the needs of workers in regions currently reliant on fossil fuels.

- Daniel Tencer reports on Justin Trudeau's callous suggestion that workers robbed of their pensions by corporate greed should be satisfied with Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. (And it's particularly worth noting how those programs have been allowed to stagnate in order to leave room for exactly the type of private pensions then diverted to enrich executives and shareholders.)

- Finally, Tim Harford discusses the strengths and weaknesses of a focus on self-reported happiness as the basis for policy development. And Andre Picard weighs in on the need to invest in social supports as the most effective means of improving health outcomes.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tom Parkin writes that the Trudeau Libs and Bill Morneau have taken the side of wealthy shareholders over workers who want only the secure retirement they've already paid for through deferred wages:

Morneau should be requiring companies to tell Canadians’ pension regulator about their dividend plans. He should be setting processes and rules that get healthy companies to fully fund pensions — before there’s another Sears-type pension fiasco.

Instead, Morneau is sponsoring Bill C-27. True, it does help eliminate pension liabilities — but not by funding them. Morneau’s bill would help employers permanently shift potential liabilities onto workers by replacing defined benefit plans with “target” plans.

On pensions, tax havens and private infrastructure finance, Bill Moreau has shown he’s a rich guy’s rich guy. That’s what he was as leader of a C.D. Howe Institute, which is little more than a CEO lobby group. That’s what he is as Finance Minister. He can’t be gone soon enough.

- And Alan Freeman echoes the view that Morneau can't be kept in a position which he's used mostly to enrich his own class of vulture capitalists.

- Meanwhile, Chris Varcoe reports on the Notley government's push to make sure that federal bankruptcy law doesn't leave the public on the hook for the costs of remediating abandoned oil wells.

- Alex Hemingway discusses the role tax fairness can play in reducing inequality - and how to make that work in British Columbia's next budget. And Dean Beeby reports on the Canada Revenue Agency's first steps toward cracking down on tax avoidance in the country's wealthiest neighbourhoods.

- Finally, Ed Finn writes that citizen happiness correlates far more strongly with genuinely democratic and responsive government than with raw GDP.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- The Star offers an editorial on the continued increase in wage inequality in Canada, highlighting the complete lack of any connection between accomplishment and executive compensation:

(T)he country’s economic performance has changed dramatically. In 2007, when Mackenzie began, the Canadian economy was growing by leaps and bounds, leading some economists to predict that the business cycle could only improve.

Then the 2008 recession hit. Today, the economy is limping along; a growing proportion of the population needs two or three low-wage jobs to survive; and families are cutting back on everything from groceries to heating costs.

Yet there is no sign of restraint at the top. The 100 highest-paid chief executives took home between $3.9 million and $49.5 million in total compensation, for an average of $7.96 million, in 2012 (the latest year for which Mackenzie could get figures). The average Canadian earned $46,634.

“Five years after a global recession knocked the wind out of Canada’s labour market, throwing tens of thousands of workers onto the unemployment line and sidelining a generation of young workers, the compensation of Canada’s CEO elite continues to sail along,” Mackenzie said. What’s more, he added, “there is no clear relationship between CEO compensation and any measure of corporate performance.”

- Meanwhile, Matthew Hutson discusses the dangers of believing that wealth and social status result solely from inherent personal superiority - as well as the efforts of right-wing politicians to cultivate exactly that belief. Paul Krugman notes that the only way to pretend inequality isn't a serious issue is to mangle income data beyond all recognition. And Bruce Livesey eviscerates Thomas Watson's attempt to claim that all corporate fraud and abuse are the fault of the people victimized by a predatory financial system.

- Owen Jones muses about the prospect of more effective left-wing populism to counter the corporatist message:

It was starting to look like the Tories were going to get away with all this, building a Little England, seething with bile and fear, of booming profits and crashing living standards. Labour appeared to have decided: “Sod this for a game of soldiers, providing a semblance of opposition is way too much hassle, let’s have a lie-in until May 2015.” But then Ed Miliband realised that the populism of the Right could only be confronted with populism from the Left.

Every time Labour indulges in bashing immigrants and unemployed people, it just allows the Tories to set the terms of debate, driving issues up the national agenda that ensure the Right thrives. Labour will never win at being trusted to kick foreigners or poor people most, and should file for moral bankruptcy if it did. Similarly, the Tories cannot win on the “cost of living crisis”, as it’s been christened, and realised they have to change the subject, and quickly.

So 2014 has to be the year when left-wing populism flourishes. That means learning from the Right: simple messages that are repeated ad infinitum, hammered into the electorate’s skulls, constantly forcing opponents on to the defensive. Why are we, the taxpayer, subsidising the poverty wages of the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, to the tune of tens of billions of pounds each year? Instead, let’s have a deficit-reducing living wage, which would inject a healthy dose of demand into the economy and, according to one economist, create 58,000 jobs. Why are landlords allowed to fleece the taxpayer with rents that need topping up with state benefits when we should both control rents and give councils the power to build homes, bringing down the social security bill, creating skilled jobs and sorting out the housing crisis?

- And finally, Dylan Matthews interviews Benjamin Radcliff about the link between a more robust government and happier citizens - with a particular focus on decommodification as a precondition to greater well-being.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Suzuki makes the case for evaluating our well-being through Gross National Happiness rather than GDP alone:

There’s more to happiness than just having a clean environment – and Bhutan has yet to get there. According to research for the UN Conference on Happiness, “The happiest countries in the world are all in Northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands).” Although these countries are wealthy, the study points out that money isn’t the only factor, as happiness is decreasing in countries like the U.S. “Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries,” the researchers write. “At the individual level, good mental and physical health, someone to count on, job security and stable families are crucial.” Note that the happiest countries all have healthy economies and robust social programs.
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There’s an old saw that says the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. In the case of leaders who focus almost entirely on economic growth and corporate interests, it’s a recipe for disaster. As George Monbiot recently wrote in the U.K.’s Guardian, “In return for 150 years of explosive consumption, much of which does nothing to advance human welfare, we are atomising the natural world and the human systems that depend on it.”

As light gradually returns to the north and we celebrate a season of sharing, our leaders could brighten all our lives by considering what really makes our societies strong, healthy and happy.

 - Don Lenihan discusses how the Cons' F-35 debacle represents a classic example of the type of government capture that flourishes when decisions are made without transparency:

Purchasing a fleet of fifth-generation fighter jets, for example, is an extremely complex and technical task. On files like this, expert advice not only informs policy, it usually drives it. For a minster who may not know a cockpit from a wing flap, this can be a challenge.

While bureaucrats, lobbyists and vendors may call themselves advisors, too often they turn out to be the real decision-makers on the file. There’s a term for this in policy circles: capture. If the reports are right, the F-35 story looks like a textbook case.
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Secrecy plays a big role in capture. It is supposed to give the inner circle (and the government) a critical advantage over opponents. If your opponents know what you know, they can challenge you on it, perhaps publicly. If the issues at stake rest on technical knowledge and expertise — as in the case of the F-35 file — there is always a risk that your opponents’ analysis will be better than yours, or that they might be better at persuading others that it is. If they win, you lose.

Secrecy counters this. It positions the inner circle for battle and helps ensure they are in control of the process.

Ministers and advisors alike find this kind of argument convincing and reassuring. For ministers, however, it has a fatal flaw. The minister’s role in the policy process is fundamentally different from that of the advisors. Ministers must account publicly for their decisions.

 - But Michael den Dandt has a few more terms for the Cons' disastrous excuse for government in addressing the F-35 purchase:

No matter what happens now, the F-35 episode will stand as a spectacular example of how not to manage an important public project. One can call it ramshackle, slipshod, inept, dishonest and incompetent, and not even begin to do events justice. Had they deliberately set out to spiral-dive their reputations for sound management and probity into the ground, Peter MacKay & Co. could not have done a better job than the record shows these past three years.
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In unveiling their new-new process, chastened ministers will shelter beneath Ambrose’s personal Harry Potter invisibility cloak, which she has earned by not engaging in the asinine talking-point babble that has become a substitute for reason in this House of Commons. They will continue to exploit Alexander’s reputation, until it too no longer functions.

What they cannot so easily address is why MacKay, Fantino, the apparatus of the Prime Minister’s Office, and Harper himself, ignored so many credible warnings, which came from so many credible quarters, that sole-sourcing the F-35 was a terrible idea. Nor can they undo that, for months on end, they met these legitimate voices, such as that of Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, with contempt. Page, who was just doing his job, was proven almost exactly right. The government, which was not doing its job, was proven almost exactly wrong.

The jet purchase they can fix, with a competition. The cast of mind that got them here, not so much. Absent a radical overhaul of cabinet, and a miraculous transformation in their approach to wielding power, they will wear it. It’s too colossal a bungle to set aside.

- Finally, Stuart Trew writes that there's predictably one part of the TPP that the Cons are trying to eliminate - as any enforceable labour standards are once again intolerable to the Harper Cons.

Suddenly it all makes sense

So that's why there's a significant backlash against even trying to measure happiness as a positive outcome - as at least Andrew Jackson's quick chart suggests that it correlates nicely with low inequality. But let's take the comparison a step further by also considering the provincial ranks for GDP per capita. Among the interesting connections between the three factors:

- Prince Edward Island ranks #1 for both lowest inequality and most satisfaction. And the fact that the province ranks #10 in GDP per capita doesn't seem to have affected the high degree of provincial happiness.
- Conversely, British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan all rank in the top 5 for GDP per capita, while also ranking as the four provinces notably higher than the others in inequality. And all have a happiness ranking significantly below their GDP ranking (5 and 9, 4 and 10, 1 and 5, and 2 and 4 respectively).
- And for those wondering whether there's an inevitable conflict between reducing inequality and the level of GDP per capita, Newfoundland and Labrador looks to serve as a strong counterexample - ranking #3 in per-capita GDP, tied for #3 in lowest inequality, and #2 in satisfaction.

Of course, the above is only an extremely rough look based on a crude ranking which doesn't take into account the level of difference between provinces. But on the surface, there looks to be enough of a disconnect between GDP and citizen satisfaction to suggest that any attempt to actually determine what people want - rather than simply assuming that it correlates with and is measured by wealth - may well lead to some serious questions about our current policy direction.