Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Shaun Richman reviews David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs - including the inevitable inference that there needs to be some means for people to be supported without having to seek out useless work:

Much of the “bullshitization” of white-collar work is purely accidental, but Graeber argues that capitalists couldn’t have designed a more effective pecking order of oppression if they’d tried. At the bottom, you have millions of workers striving to work longer hours and fighting for a couple more dollars an hour that might lift them out of literal poverty. In between the desperate lumpen and the de facto rulers of the world is a massive segment of the workforce who secretly suspect that maintaining a decent standard of living doesn’t correlate with useful or productive work (or, indeed, any work at all!). But challenging the system could imperil their relative comfort.

They are more likely to resent people whose jobs are easily explainable to their family and neighbors—but who nevertheless demand better wages and working conditions—than to make common cause with them.

Graeber points to autoworkers and teachers as workers who achieve a tangible degree of satisfaction from their work and who are frequent targets of the public’s ire for expecting that and decent wages. I think more of all those amateur chefs on Chopped, hoping to win a $10,000 purse in order to buy a food truck. How many thousands of people are living an essentially monastic lifestyle because they want to make a living feeding people? In a world filled with well-paying but meaningless work, or poorly-paid drudgery that a robot could (and may soon) do, is it any wonder that so many people yearn for a meaningful life spent cooking for people and watching them enjoy the literal fruits of their labor?

What I particularly love about Graeber’s book is how it cutes to the revival of the kind of labor lit that flourished in the 1970s. The last 40 years of globalization, automation, and the gutting of our labor laws has narrowed the focus of too many labor writers to questions of how workers can get enough hours at a high-enough minimum wage and with decent enough benefits to reverse an inexorable slide into poverty.

...
Being an anarchist, Graeber is loath to suggest specific policy solutions. Still, he can’t help but talk about the policy that is most frequently advocated by the nerds who talk about the post-scarcity society: the universal basic income. Obviously, he sees value in decoupling the deservedness of food, shelter, and clothing from how one spends the majority of her waking hours. There simply isn’t enough useful work to go around for each of us to trade an hour for a loaf of bread.

The alternative progressive policy proposal—a federal commitment to full employment—is touted as more pragmatic and winnable. It’s a reasonable appeal to the god, mom, and apple-pie Calvinist work ethic. And, after all, there are a lot of roads and bridges that need to be rebuilt, a lot of child and elder care that should be compensated as the very real work it is, and well, who wouldn’t love to see a lot of WPA-style public artwork going up around the world? But, Bullshit Jobs should serve as a warning that a continued fidelity to the notion that one must work for one’s supper would likely condemn many of us to box-checking and duct-taping, as the machines take over and make most of us redundant.  

- Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin make the case for a combination of a basic income to ensure people's security, and a focus on environmental repair rather than consumerism to ensure a sustainable society. And Nathaniel Lewis points out that social welfare benefits do far more to reduce poverty than raw job numbers.

- Ed Broadbent argues that if Justin Trudeau wants to claim to be a progressive leader, he needs to start working on helping out the poor. And the BBC reports on a new survey showing growing public recognition that poor health is the result of an unjust society.

- Branko Marcetic comments on the massive amounts of wage theft by U.S. employers. And Dave Jamieson discusses the success of the Culinary Workers Union in achieving improved wages and working conditions in the face of state laws intended to undermine organized labour.

- Finally, Bob Hennelly suggests that student debt forgiveness would actually offer the economic boost which was supposed to represent the rationale for corporate tax cuts. And Albert Van Santvoort points out that contrary to the bloviations of business mouthpieces looking for any excuse to hand more money to corporations, the U.S.' tax slashing hasn't produced any discernible effect on corporate investment in Canada.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Michal Kalecki discusses how full employment shifts the balance of power from corporations to workers. Roland Kupers reminds us that inequality is a matter of policy choices - and that there's broad public support to reduce the level we're stuck with at the moment.

- Nijimie Dzurinko points out the need to fight back against the right-wing war on people living in poverty. And the Economist reports on new research into the effect of income on early childhood development.

- Jillian Berman highlights how student debt exacerbates the U.S. wealth gap based on race.

- Finally, J. David Hughes takes a look at Canada's energy future - and the importance of shifting toward cleaner renewable energy as soon as possible. Andrew Nikiforuk summarizes Hughes' work with nine crucial facts about where we stand today. And Ainslie Cruickshank highlights the impossibility of meeting even our already-insufficient climate change promises while ramping up the production of dirty fossil fuels.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- J.W. Mason reviews Yanis Varoufakis' Adults in the Room with a focus on how damaging austerity was forced on Greece by other governments. And Jan Rovny comments on the need for Europe's left-wing parties to adapt to the precarious economy and evolving social structures.

- Laurie Monsebraaten reports on some of the early results of Ontario's basic income trial - including the predictable health benefits of income security. But in a signal as to how the corporate sector views individual financial security. Rob Davies reports on the UK's investigation into Carillion's collapse - including the privateers' view of the pensions promised to workers as a "waste of money"  .

- Douglas Welbanks challenges the arguments against free tuition by pointing out both the increased importance of post-secondary education, and the limited amelioration of inequality within a student loan system which saddles young workers with debt. 

- Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney point out that many countries are falling short of even their already-insufficient Paris Agreement emission reduction promises. And Crawford Kilian notes that Canada is living far beyond its environmental means.

- Finally, Kevin Milligan writes about the outlines of the alternative budget plans on offer from Canada's federal opposition parties. And Nora Loreto discusses how the NDP's future lies in its ability to mobilize the public, rather than hoping to catch lightning in a bottle on election day. [Edit: fixed wording, typo.]

New column day

Here, on the growing gap between the Trudeau Libs' "middle class" messaging and the self-perception of a growing working class in Canada.

For further reading...
- Ekos' polling is discussed here, with detailed tables here (PDF).
- The Libs' 2015 platform is again here (PDF). And again, PressProgress discussed Bill Morneau's message that Canadian workers should accept precarity as the new normal here.
- For information on a few of the barriers being placed in the way of younger workers, see Statistics Canada's summary of the trajectory of tuition fees, Daniel Tencer's discussion of ballooning housing prices, and Patricia Kozicka's reporting on the trend of childbirth being pushed later into life.
- Finally, I wrote about the Libs' failure to close tax loopholes for the wealthy here. And John Paul Tasker and Karina Roman reported on the sudden move to crack down on employee benefits, while Tencer reviewed its effect on lower-income workers before the Libs hastily retreated.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Ben Steverman examines the unfairness of the U.S.' tax system - which, like Canada's, offers gratuitous giveaways to wealthy investors which force workers to pay more:

Politicians have intentionally set tax rates on wages much higher than those on long-term investment returns. The U.S. has a progressive tax system in the sense that well-paid workers sacrifice much more than poor workers on their “ordinary income.” But Americans with so-called unearned income—qualified dividends and long-term capital gains—get a break. A billionaire investor can pay about the same marginal rate as a $40,000-a-year worker, a fact Warren Buffett has famously lamented.
 ...
There’s a big flaw, though, in the argument that lower taxes on the rich stimulate longer-term investment, and thus jobs, famously labeled as “trickle-down economics.” While tax rates might affect the timing of some investor decisions in the medium term, it’s much harder to see how they affect long-term behavior. No matter the tax rate, investors ultimately look for opportunities to get richer.

“There is little empirical evidence showing that taxing investors less stimulates savings and growth,” said Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Supply-side economists disagree, and can point to tax cuts in the 1980s that seemed to spur the U.S. and U.K. economies. But there’s little evidence of a relationship between economic growth and investment taxes over the long term.

- Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman connect (PDF) the wealth hidden away in tax havens to its national sources - and then to develop a more accurate estimate of top-end wealth which has been siphoned off. And the Equality Trust offers a set of policy proposals for Labour to reduce inequality in the UK - with both regional imbalances and social ownership among the key economic priorities.

- Meanwhile, Brent Patterson examines how the oil industry - with the assistance of Lib insiders - is trying to limit public regulation of pipelines through NAFTA.

- Kevin Quigley notes that while a trial of the conductor involved in the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion will offer some testing of the causes of the disaster, more important systemic issues are going unaddressed in the absence of a broader inquiry.

- Finally, Don Pittis examines the social benefits of post-secondary education which are being lost in an effort to extract money from students. And Erika Shaker points out that Statistics Canada is making it more difficult to compare tuition across provinces.

Leadership 2017 Platform Analysis - Niki Ashton

As I've noted previously, Niki Ashton's debate strategy doesn't often seem to involve discussing policy at length. And that's a shame, because she's done more than any other candidate to raise (and propose solutions to) a broad range of issues.

While Ashton has primarily emphasized her proposals for free tuition and social ownership, other parts of her platform which deserve further attention include:
- an immediate path to citizenship for migrant workers and temporary foreign workers, coupled with a plan to ensure that anybody who comes to Canada to live is similarly able to become a citizen;
- a reworking of prisons to improve the education and training available for offenders, while also providing labour protection for prison labourers;
- a jobs plan which explicitly aims toward sustainable full employment; 
- introducing a Financial Activities Tax aimed specifically at banking profits and bonuses, along with a "Robin Hood" tax on transactions which has been more extensively discussed elsewhere;
and
- including preventative dental care in the Canada Health Act (alongside plans for pharmacare and mental health).

Unfortunately, the lack of discussion of those proposals by either Ashton or her competitors has also left little scope to address either their respective priority, or any potential issues with them. And it's not clear that the current shape of the campaign will leave much time for clarification.

But Ashton deserves ample credit for developing a broad set of ideas which merit further discussion within the NDP no matter how members wind up voting in the leadership race. And anybody who hasn't heard as much policy detail as they'd like in the rest of the leadership campaign may want to give Ashton's policies a much closer look.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ben Casselman points out how corporate consolidation can produce harmful results for consumers and workers alike. Guy Standing discusses how we're all worse off for the spread of rentier capitalism. And Mariana Mazzucato reminds us that an entrepreneurial government is a must if we want to see general economic development:

An entrepreneurial society needs an entrepreneurial state, one that through visionary and strategic public investments, distributed across the innovation chain, can create animal spirits in private businesses. Entrepreneurs then see growth opportunities, and business investment follows.

Breakthrough technologies, such as the internet and biotech, did not emerge from governments worried about “commercialization”; they emerged from the spillovers of investments that were focused on long-run public missions. Missions of the past, such as getting a man to the moon, translated into multiple homework problems that needed different actors to work together in dynamic partnerships, spurring innovation. Today’s societal challenges, from aging to climate change, can provide a similar focus and animating force. They can stimulate innovation and give direction for new private investment and entrepreneurial activity as profit-making opportunities come into sight. Mission-oriented thinking could also be used to develop technology roadmaps for the 17 sustainable development goals.

Crucially, this will require public leadership, challenging the prevailing ideology which limits the role of public actors to simply de-risking or facilitating the real heroes — the private sector wealth creators, like risk-loving entrepreneurs — while waiting for the market to find solutions. In the few countries that have achieved innovation-led smart growth — like the U.S., Israel, Denmark, and even China today — public actors have not just enabled the private sector. They have actively taken risks as an investor of first resort, not just a lender of last resort.

- Thomas Piketty discusses the spread of inequality in Australia (and around the globe).

- Yael Abouhalkah notes that much like Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party government, Sam Brownback's utter failure of a Republican administration is responding to the consistent flow of bad news by hiding the state of the economy from the public.

- PressProgress examines the evidence that Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau are utterly clueless about the dangers and costs of precarious work. And Nora Loreto responds to Morneau's position that young workers in particular have to settle for constant insecurity.

- Finally, Peyton Veitch writes that free tuition represents an important counterweight to elitism and social immobility. And Ashifa Kassam reports on Ontario's basic income pilot project as another means of giving people a reasonable base for future planning.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew applaud Wallonia's principled stance against the CETA. And Joseph Stiglitz discusses the need to set up social and economic systems which actually serve the public good, rather than favouring corporate interests:

Where the trade agreements failed, it was not because the US was outsmarted by its trading partners; it was because the US trade agenda was shaped by corporate interests. America’s companies have done well, and it is the Republicans who have blocked efforts to ensure that Americans made worse off by trade agreements would share the benefits. 

Thus, many Americans feel buffeted by forces outside their control, leading to outcomes that are distinctly unfair. Long-standing assumptions – that America is a land of opportunity and that each generation will be better off than the last – have been called into question. The global financial crisis may have represented a turning point for many voters: their government saved the rich bankers who had brought the US to the brink of ruin, while seemingly doing almost nothing for the millions of ordinary Americans who lost their jobs and homes. The system not only produced unfair results, but seemed rigged to do so. 

...

There are two messages US political elites should be hearing. The simplistic neo-liberal market-fundamentalist theories that have shaped so much economic policy during the last four decades are badly misleading, with GDP growth coming at the price of soaring inequality. Trickle-down economics hasn’t and won’t work. Markets don’t exist in a vacuum. The Thatcher-Reagan “revolution,” which rewrote the rules and restructured markets for the benefit of those at the top, succeeded all too well in increasing inequality, but utterly failed in its mission to increase growth. 

This leads to the second message: we need to rewrite the rules of the economy once again, this time to ensure that ordinary citizens benefit. Politicians in the US and elsewhere who ignore this lesson will be held accountable. Change entails risk. But the Trump phenomenon – and more than a few similar political developments in Europe – has revealed the far greater risks entailed by failing to heed this message: societies divided, democracies undermined, and economies weakened.

- Jesse Brown rightly questions whether Canada is living up to its self-image as a progressive example for the world, while Cindy Blackstock notes that continued discrimination against First Nations children is just one crucial area where a change in government hasn't led to improvement in substance.

- Leilani Farha discusses the need to start seeing housing in terms of human rights rather than market commodities. Elisheva Passarello describes how transitional housing allowed her to move from poverty and homelessness toward improvement in all facets of her life. Beatrice Britneff reports on a new study  showing that we could end homelessness in Canada in a decade. And Rachel Zeineker notes that at least in Yellowknife, the public is well aware that homelessness ranks ahead of everything else a problem demanding immediate attention and resources.

- Erika Shaker makes the case for zero tuition (while countering some of the usual spin which has resulted in the cost of education being borne increasingly by students without the means to pay it).

- Finally, Stewart Prest discusses the "yellow dog effect" as an important argument against first-past-the-post politics.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Larry Elliott writes that the public is rightly frustrated with an economic model designed to shift money to those who already have the most - and that progressive parties in particular need to offer a meaningful alternative:

The belief on the left was that 2008 sounded the death knell for the model of capitalism that dominated the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st; one based around privatisation, trickle-down economics, and a shift in the balance of power away from organised labour and towards international banks. Lehman’s bankruptcy would prove to be the equivalent of the Opec oil shock of 1973, the moment the pendulum swung, only this time from right to left.

It didn’t work out like that. There was no social democratic moment because social democratic parties had largely bought into the idea that markets knew best. They had no critique of what had gone wrong so they lacked a strategy to put things right. What’s more, they still don’t, which is why challenges to Jeremy Corbyn from his Labour party rivals have been so feeble.
...
Hence the appetite among voters for controls. Ask them whether they support a financial transactions tax and they answer yes. Ask them whether they support curbs on the dumping of cheap Chinese steel that is threatening jobs in Port Talbot and they answer yes. Ask them if they want controls on immigration and they answer yes.

In this, the public shows more consistency than the politicians. Conservative Brexiters are in favour of free movement of capital and goods, but not of people. The Labour party is up for controls on money and goods but supports free movement of labour. The freedoms integral to globalisation are increasingly at odds with democracy. Something has to give.

In the introduction to a recently published book of essays*, Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato say that the state has a crucial role to play in making economies more prosperous and successful, not least through the role the state can play in nurturing and supporting innovation. This runs counter to the idea that governments should limit themselves to correcting occasional and short-lived market failure, but as Jacobs and Mazzucato rightly note markets are the result of political decisions.

- Meanwhile, Nicolas Yan highlights the need to ensure that the gains from automation in particular don't get captured by a lucky few. And Mazzucato offers a list of suggestions as to how to put the power of the state to use in building shared wealth.

- Lana Payne rightly argues that anybody wanting to see a progressive trade agenda should be fighting against the entrenchment of corporate power through the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- George Wehby, Dhaval Dave and Robert Kaestner examine the effect of the minimum wage on infant health, and find a substantive improvement where wages are more livable. And Daniel Boffey points out that increased reliance on student loans rather than direct funding for post-secondary education results in worsened inequality.

- Finally, Aaron Wherry points out that Canada's federal government has long had estimates available as to the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions; it's just done nothing to ensure those costs are internalized. And Naomi Klein discusses how the "othering" of the people bearing the largest burden of climate change is producing disastrous environmental and social consequences.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Christopher Ingraham points out that while many luxuries are getting cheaper with time, the necessities of life are becoming much more difficult to afford:

Many manufactured goods — like TVs and appliances — come from overseas, where labor costs are cheaper. “International, global competition lowers prices directly from lower-cost imported goods, and indirectly by forcing U.S. manufacturers to behave more competitively, with lower prices, higher quality, better service, et cetera,” Perry said.

On the flip side, things like education and medical care can’t be produced in a factory, so those pressures do not apply. Compounding it, many Americans are insulated from the full costs of these services. Private and public insurance companies pay most medical costs, so there tends to be little incentive for individuals to shop around for cheaper medical care.

In the case of higher education, the nation’s massive student loan industry bears much of the upfront burden of rising prices. To the typical 18-year-old, a $120,000 tuition bill may seem like an abstraction when you don’t have to start paying it off until your mid-20s or later. As a result, the nation’s college students and graduates now collectively owe upward of $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.

“Prices rise when [health care and college] markets are not competitive and not exposed to global competition,” Perry said, “and prices rise when easy credit is available.”

Hence, our current predicament. We can afford the things we don’t need, but we need the things we can’t afford.

- Alex Usher notes how one of the same cost pressures applies in Canada, as universities losing public funding are squeezing students for massive tuition increases. And Lindsay Kines reports that the Clark government's decision to make life less affordable for people with disabilities in British Columbia has led to 3,500 people giving up their transit passes.

- Natalia Khosla and Sean McElwee discuss the difficulty in addressing racism when many people live in denial of their continued privilege.

- Paul Wells comments on SNC Lavalin's long track record of illegal corporate donations to the Libs and the Cons.

- Finally, Gerry Caplan points out how Justin Trudeau is dodging key human rights questions. And Mike Blanchfield reports that the Libs' willingness to undermine a treaty prohibiting the use of cluster bombs represents just another area where they're leaving the Cons' most harmful policies untouched.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Robert Reich discusses how our economy is rigged so that the self-proclaimed risk-takers actually can't lose:

I don’t want to pick on Ms. Mayer or the managers of the funds that invest in Yahoo. They’re typical of the no-lose system in which America’s corporate and financial elite now operate.

But the rest of America works in a different system.

Theirs is cutthroat hyper-capitalism – in which wages are shrinking, median household income continues to drop, workers are fired without warning, two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck, and employees are being classified as “independent contractors” without any labor protections at all.

Why is there no-lose socialism for the rich and cutthroat hyper-capitalism for everyone else?

Because the rules of the game – including labor laws, pension laws, corporate laws, and tax laws – have been crafted by those at the top, and the lawyers and lobbyists who work for them.

- Meanwhile, Daniel Tencer reports on the Canada's increasing stratification and decreasing social mobility. Maggie Thompson discusses the crushing burden of student loan debt on young workers from poor backgrounds. And Sarah Jane Glynn looks at the difference in paid leave and workplace flexibility among different types of workers - with those benefits serving as just one more area where precarious work tends to be more difficult.

- Brian Postl and Pierre-Gerlier Forest write about Canada's urgent need to invest in indigenous health. And the Star's editorial board lists child care and pharmacare among the social needs calling for immediate attention from the federal government.

- Jeremy Nuttall reports on Nathan Cullen's justified concerns that the Libs' only plan for electoral reform is to put it off.

- And finally, Geoff Leo exposes the exorbitant fees being demanded by Saskatchewan's government for information about the shady Global Transportation Hub land dealings.

New column day

Here, on the contrast between a Saskatchewan Party platform (and government) dedicated to handing money to the people who need it least, and an NDP which plans to help where it's most needed with what limited resources are left since Brad Wall wasted a boom.

For further reading...
- CBC reported here on the stark difference in the parties' reactions to First Nations health emergencies.
- Murray Mandryk discusses the Saskatchewan Party's inexplicable plans to further inflate a housing bubble.
- And for general coverage of Saskatchewan's election campaign, I'll point for now to CBC and the Leader-Post - while encouraging readers to be on the lookout for new voices during the campaign.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Jackson argues that a federal infrastructure program can and should be oriented toward developing a skilled and diverse workforce, rather than rewarding free-riding contractors who don't contribute to those outcomes. And a joint statement from community and labour groups posted by Angella MacEwen argues that a major focus of the upcoming federal budget should be to repair and strengthen Employment Insurance.

- Andrew Sayer laments the fact that our economy is set up to disproportionately reward unproductive ownership and rent extraction rather than actual contributions to social well-being. And Jill Treanor provides a prime example, as UK banks who are laying off frontline workers and seeing their share values decline are nonetheless handing out billions of dollars in bonuses to a lucky few.

- Sabrina Tavernise writes about the U.S.' growing inequality in life expectancy between the rich and the poor.

- Glenn Burley studies how it's possible to eliminate tuition and compulsory fees from post-secondary education at a readily affordable price. And PressProgress follows up by highlighting how much tuition is currently costing Canadian students. 

- Finally, Andrea Hill exposes the Saskatchewan Party's appalling slashing of services for homeless residents of Saskatoon. And Ken Gousseau reports on the CCPA's research into what Saskatchewan stands to lose if the Wall government gets the chance to follow through on its plans to conduct a fire sale of publicly-owned liquor stores.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Michael Hiltzik discusses how corporate apologists are trying (but failing) to minimize the existence and importance of income inequality. Lawrence Martin notes that the rest of Canada's economic indicators are similarly signalling that Conservative dogma is of absolutely no use in the real world. And Michael Geist observes that among the new "caretaker" rules is a provision allowing the Cons to keep trying to inflict the TPP as their parting shot at Canada even if their election plans are going nowhere.

- Michael Harris points out just a few of the whoppers which Stephen Harper will have to try to sell over the course of the federal election campaign. And it's well worth noting that Harper will need to do so while being trusted by virtually nobody outside his party's core supporters.

- In contrast, Antonia Zerbisias comments that Thomas Mulcair's has seemed impervious to attacks so far. (Though there's no doubt that he'll be tested more during the campaign than he has been yet.)

- Judy Shum comments on the progress made by the Housing First program in providing a secure base for previously-homeless Saskatoon residents.

- Finally, Hugh MacKenzie counters the Fraser Institute's latest attempt to pitch retirement only for the few. Noralou Roos and Evelyn Forget make the case for a guaranteed annual income to make sure everybody enjoys enough security to make choices. And CBC reports that university students in Newfoundland and Labrador are set to start receiving grants rather than being buried under a lifetime of student loan debt.

New column day

Here, on the Saskatchewan Party's choice to turn the graduate retention credit into a purely political goodie rather than a program which could conceivably retain Saskatchewan graduates, while at the same time devaluing the very concept of education for its own sake.

For further reading...
- The province's explanation (such as it is) can be found here. And CBC reported on the changes here.
- I allude in the column to Ontario's choice to put tuition policy directly in the hands of employers as reported by Simona Chiose here.
- And Kevin Milligan's analysis of the problems with the Harper Cons' non-refundable tax baubles applies even more to the graduate retention credit.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- For those looking for information about today's day of action against C-51, Leadnow and Rabble both have details.

- Meanwhile, CBC reports that a professor merely taking pictures on public land near a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline site is already being harassed by the RCMP under current law. Tonda MacCharles notes that lawyers currently involved in dealing with classified-evidence cases have joined the call to rein in the Cons' terror bill, while PressProgress points out that airlines are also raising serious concerns about the unfettered power handed to a single minister to dictate the terms of air travel. And Stephen Maher rightly questions whether CSIS is anywhere close to being up to the tasks assigned to it under C-51.

- Jeffrey Simpson calls for us to treat terrorism as a relatively small one of a number of dangers to be managed, not a basis for welcoming a radical reshaping of our society to be more intrusive and less inclusive. And Susan Delacourt comments on the Cons' irresponsible choice to sow baseless fear for the sole purpose of frightening people into emptying their pockets, while hoping the message will lose its power by the time Canadians go to the polls:

(E)ven seasoned marketers know that repetition has its limits. As far back as 1970, the University of Toronto’s Daniel Berlyne produced research showing that repeated exposure to novelty in advertising breeds familiarity at first, then boredom or contempt — the “two-factor” or “wear-in, wear-out” effect.

By marketing wisdom alone, then, this all-fear approach in the current political climate is a risky gambit. Sustaining the nation in a constant state of fear, all the way through an election months away, is a tall order for a government that may have its own wear-out concerns after nearly 10 years in office.

And at the risk of seeming naive or idealistic, it would be nice if higher principles than marketing — like the responsibility and privilege of governing — guided our politics back to the high road in these debates on tolerance and terror.

As a country, Canada is better than the politics of fear that is being marketed to citizens at the moment.

- Rick Salutin writes that Justin Trudeau has given away the game in acknowledging that he's supporting C-51 solely for crass political purposes of his own. But I remain baffled as to why Trudeau would hold the illusion that the Cons will somehow avoid criticizing him merely because he's giving them everything they want out of sheer cowardice.

- Finally, Simona Chiose reports on the Wynne Libs' plan to turn Ontario's university system over to employers in establishing program designs and tuition levels. And Simon Enoch calls out the similarly distorted premises behind the Saskatchewan Party's consultation on liquor retailing.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig discusses the radical difference between how Canadians want to see public resources used (based on the example set by governments elsewhere), and the determination of the Cons and their corporate allies to instead fritter away every dime of fiscal capacity the federal government manages to find:

Last week, Germany completed its plan to provide free university tuition to all its students. It’s an idea that no doubt would excite the hopes and dreams of young people in Canada — which explains the need to snuff it out before it catches on.

Certainly, it’s the kind of big idea that powerful interests here are keen to keep off the radar as Ottawa finds itself flush with surplus cash — $6 billion next year, with bigger surpluses expected in future years.

Accordingly, a phalanx of right-wing think tanks is gearing up to ensure that, after years of cutbacks and austerity, ordinary Canadians don’t get any wild ideas about spending that surplus money on national programs that would greatly improve their lives — programs that could, for instance, provide them with affordable access to universities, child care, home care, public transit, adequate pension benefits, a pharmacare plan, unemployment insurance benefits that are actually available to people who are unemployed, etc...

Suppressing such aspirations in Canadians has long been the stock-in-trade of right-wing think tanks and the corporate interests that fund them. And they’ve been hugely successful in keeping these sorts of generous public services and benefits — which are the norm in most northern European countries — well off the agenda here.
...
(W)hen Ottawa started generating big surpluses in the late 1990s, it quickly began slashing taxes — particularly on corporations and high-income earners. As a result, Ottawa now collects about $50 billion less in taxes per year than it would have if it hadn’t done all that tax-cutting, according to labour economist Toby Sanger. That has deprived governments of the revenue they’d need to provide the kind of enhanced public programs many Canadians probably would like.

Tax-slashing has been the pattern in Canada for decades. It has left Ottawa, in recent years, collecting less in tax revenue as a percentage of GDP than it has at any point since 1940. No wonder we can’t afford European-style social programs. Public revenue has been vanishing into the pockets of corporations and the very rich.

- Meanwhile, Robert Kuttner traces the factors which led to a more equal distribution of wealth after World War II - and which unfortunately have had far less impact on more recent economic developments.

- Ian Welsh notes that global inequality and needless austerity are making ebola into far more of a threat than it should be. And Richard Murphy charts how the UK's move toward needless government-slashing resulted in the reversal of what looked to be an economic recovery.

- Andrew Gage and Michael Byers examine how climate change may create enormous risks for the oil industry (and governments who rely unduly on it as an economic engine). And Aaron Wherry muses about how much more we'd be doing about climate change if only it could be solved through combat.

- Finally, Ludvic Moquin-Beaudry discusses how the NDP's continued strength in Quebec flows from the desire of voters to play a significant role - and have a strong voice - on the federal political scene. And Graeme Truelove highlights the NDP's use of smart parliamentary tactics to raise the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women even as the Cons seek to stifle any debate.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Charlie Smith discusses - and then follows up on - Donald Gutstein's work in tracing the connections between the Harper Cons and the shadowy, U.S.-based network of right-wing propaganda mills:

In Harperism: How Stephen Har­per and His Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada (James Lorimer & Company Ltd.), Gutstein makes the case that neoliberalism is far more sinister than simply having a desire for smaller government. A central tenet of his new book is that Harper is undermining democracy by marshalling the power of government to create and enforce markets where they’ve never existed before.

“He’s gradually moving the country from one that’s based on democracy to one that’s based on the market, which means that the decisions are not made by our duly elected representatives through the laws that they pass and the regulations that they enact,” Gutstein says.
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With astonishing intellectual dexterity, Gutstein demonstrates in his book how Harper’s overarching mission to promote economic freedom through the imposition of markets is reflected in Conservative government policies.

This explains the zealous desire to dismantle environmental regulations, muzzle government scientists, and scrap the long-form census. The faith in markets also underlies Harper’s blindness to rising income inequality and his eagerness to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board.

In addition, it provides a theoretical framework behind efforts to persuade First Nations to abandon collective ownership of their land in favour of a fee-simple system. Neoliberal ideology also manifests itself in Harper galloping around the world to sign free-trade agreements, which limit municipal and provincial governments’ ability to introduce regulations or procure locally produced goods and services.

- And on that front, Arielle Mayer points out that the FIPA may severely limit Canada's ability to do anything to rein in climate change for upwards of a generation.

- Meanwhile, Kevin Campbell reminds us that inequality is bad for business as well as being socially corrosive:

The moral case for reducing inequality is well known, and compelling. But there's little discussion of the economic case. Competition and free markets will always result in some doing better than others, but when growth accrues overwhelmingly to the top 10 per cent, it threatens the health of our society and the sustainability of the economy. If the majority of our population is unable to spend on more than merely the basics, money won't circulate through the economy. If money doesn't circulate, economic growth slows. When economic growth slows, businesses fail, jobs disappear and key programs providing health, education and safety to our citizens begin to fail. It is true that we manage inequality better than many other countries, but since when is B.C. satisfied with measuring itself against the worst instead of by our proximity to the best?
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In 2011, the top 10 per cent earned 34.4 per cent of all after-tax income in this province. But income only tells us half the story. A recent report has estimated that the top 10 per cent owns 56.2 per cent of the wealth in our province -- well above the national average.

At this point some might suggest this line of inquiry is motivated by a disdain for the economically mobile. Wrong. I believe these numbers show how income inequality is bad for business. Let me put it this way: if an individual earns 10 times as much as her neighbour, she does not buy 10 times as many bottles of Okanagan wine or make 10 times as many trips to Science World. We can measure this effect: the 'velocity' of money in Canada -- the measure of how many times the money supply circulates in a year -- is now at a 35 year low.
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There's no shortage of ideas about how to address inequality without threatening our ability to do business, but few have talked about how much the future of our economy depends on reconciling this. Let's dare to end the false choice between growth and equality. Let's make our province more prosperous by making it more fair.

- And as one example of a policy choice which could help improve the position of workers within a stronger economy, Dr. Dawg makes the case for free university tuition as an important step in encouraging economic development and social equality alike.

- Tavia Grant discusses how workers lose out when employers offer only precarious and inconsistent work in order to pad their own profit margins:

The tilt to unstable work – temp jobs, shift work or erratic part-time positions – shows “these are not the 1970s jobs any more. There’s no sense of permanence to them. That’s the area that’s really changing – the lack of commitment by employers to employees in the long term,” says Wayne Lewchuk, professor at McMaster University’s economics and labour studies departments.

In prior decades, workers were seen as investments for companies, an asset to be developed over the long term. Now, he says, they’re often viewed as a liability or a cost to be minimized whenever possible.

“The reality is, our economy is much more competitive now than it was 40 or 50 years ago. It’s a brutal world out there if you’re a firm, and so they are looking for ways to cut costs. … So we’ve seen a movement of firms to protect a core [of employees] and surrounding that with a periphery of less permanent employees or tasks that are contracted out,” Prof. Lewchuk says.

He has surveyed 4,000 people in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area and found that nearly half now work in jobs with some degree of insecurity – from short-term contracts to self-employed, working for temp agencies or without benefits.

That has clear consequences for finances, his research has found, but the impact also spills into family, health and community involvement.

- Finally, Kim Stanton both argues for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and describes what we'd need for that inquiry to lead to real progress. And Doug Cuthand is duly appalled by the Cons' push to undermine indigenous rights at the UN level.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert write that an effective solution to wealth inequality shouldn't be limited to redistributing individual income or assets, but should also include the development of a commonwealth which benefits everybody:

Instead of just giving people more purchasing power, we should be taking basic needs off the market altogether.

Consider Social Security, a wildly popular program that doesn’t count toward individual wealth. If Social Security were replaced with a private savings account, individuals would have more “wealth” (because they would have their own financial account) but less actual security. The elderly would have to spin the financial-markets roulette wheel and suffer destitution if they were unlucky. This is why social-wealth programs like Social Security combat inequality more powerfully than any privatized, individualized wealth-building “solution.”

Public programs like universal healthcare and free education function the same way, providing social wealth directly instead of hoping to boost people’s savings enough to allow them to afford either. Rather than requiring people to struggle with a byzantine system of private health insurance, universal healthcare would be available to cover the costs of genuine health needs. Similarly, broadly accessible higher education would allow people to thrive without taking on massive student loans and hoping that their “human capital” investment helps them hit the jackpot.

We already know how to create social wealth using taxes on private wealth and capital. Consider inheritance taxes: in addition to creating revenue, they motivate the wealthy to donate to nonprofits and other organs of civil society. Inheritance taxes direct private wealth to public ends.

Bringing wealth under democratic accountability—rather than making everyone a tiny capitalist—has to be an essential part of any equality agenda.

- Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy documents the high (and soaring) costs of university tuition and child care after decades of planning based on user-pay principles. Canada Without Poverty offers 10 reasons to eliminate poverty in Canada. And PressProgress highlights how a living wage is better for the economy at large.

- Matthew Yglesias discusses the relationship between the pursuit of equality and open-door immigration policies:

Reagan-era conservatives could be for welfare state rollback and broadly pro-immigration because they promised a rising tide that would lift all boats. Now that we're decades into an era of wage stagnation, those kind of easy promises ring hollow. So for Cameron and the reformicons, a tilt against immigrants is the new answer. On this view, the big problem with trickle-down economics is that the bucket is too leaky. Let the rich get richer, but prevent them from hiring maids from Latin America, and soon enough wages for native-born maids will rise.

The moral math whereby this policy becomes more attractive than the win/win/win alternative of broadly freer movement of people paired with progressive taxation and more provision of public services has always escaped me somewhat. It appears to involve putting a negative value on the interests of foreign-born people. But it is a real movement. But it's a movement on the right of politics in the United States and other English-speaking countries. Progressives, rightly, see no need to chose between equality and cosmopolitanism.

- And the Star laments that the Cons are matching the Republicans' antipathy toward anybody who doesn't share our luck in being born within a wealthy country's borders:

Last week, the federal government made a small change to Canada’s immigration rules, lowering the maximum age of a “dependant child” and eliminating any recourse for immigrant or refugee parents seeking an exception to the new definition. It’s a subtle shift, to be sure, but its subtlety belies the cruelty of its future impact and the utter lack of human feeling that underlies it and so much of our recent immigration policy.

Until this month, any unmarried child of 21 or younger could qualify as a dependant under Canada’s immigration rules and be automatically accepted along with his or her parents. Accommodations could be made, too, for full-time students older than 21 who were financially dependent on their family. But as of Aug. 1, the federal government lowered the maximum age to 18 and eliminated all exceptions.
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From a human perspective...it’s appalling. As Ashley Chapman of Citizens for Public Justice pointed out in a recent Star opinion piece, “the changes go against one of the official objectives of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — to reunite families.” The government estimates that roughly 7,000 young adults – some 800 children of refugees among them – will no longer be eligible to immigrate along with their families as dependants this year.

To abandon these youths, often in dangerous countries, without the financial or psychological support of their parents, is morally backwards. The children of those fleeing persecution are known to be at higher risk of violence themselves, especially without the protection of their family. As the Canadian Council for Refugees has pointed out, the dangers are particularly grave and abundant for isolated young women.
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And so we have closed the door a little further, become yet a little less welcoming and a little less caring. And all this because of a foolish and dangerous abstraction: the fallacious idea, ever more central to our immigration policy, that people can be reduced to mere economic units.

- Finally, Colin Freeze reports on CSEC's refusal to let Canadians know how long it's storing their private data - offering a compelling signal that privacy rights are being given absolutely no weight whatsoever as massive amounts of personal information are collected without approval or effective public oversight. But lest we think complete unaccountability is an exception rather than the rule, Bob Weber finds a similar response from Alberta's government after asking for an explanation as to who's being included and excluded in energy development hearings.

Parliament in Review: November 24, 2011

The main topic of debate in the House of Commons on Thursday, November 24 was again copyright - and once more, the Cons couldn't be bothered to try to defend their own legislation.

The Big Issue

But that left plenty of time for opposition speakers to raise the level of debate while pointing out that the Cons' choices figure to cause serious problems for creators and consumers alike. Marc-Andre Morin, Denis Blanchette, Helene Laverdiere and Francois Lapointe all noted that media conglomerates look to be the sole beneficiaries of a regime built around the supremacy of digital locks. Mylene Freeman noted that the new legislation would take us from a grey area as to consumer rights, to a black-and-white system where many seemingly ordinary activities would be criminalized. Mike Sullivan revisited the history of copyright, and particularly how the licensing-for-airplay model developed. Isabelle Morin expressed disbelief that the sentences the Cons want to impose for copyright violations are far more severe than those applicable to serious crimes. Charlie Angus discussed the dangers of locking down content, then noted that the Cons' attack on royalties amounts to taking away the capacity of many artists to earn a living. And Jonathan Tremblay raised the point that increased public reliance on electronic storage of information makes it all the more problematic for media giants to be able to control access.

Meanwhile, a couple of Cons did get involved in asking questions of NDP MPs. MP Joyce Bateman asked an eminently reasonable question about the plus side of providing for mandatory licensing for the perceptually disabled. But particularly considering their obstinate refusal to consider a levy-based model in general, one has to wonder whether the Cons would have met exactly the same response from an opposition party by alleging that the result is a "braille tax" (particularly since Mike Lake raised the "iPod tax" talking point yet again). And Brad Trost responded to Pat Martin's musing about allowing income averaging for artists in particular by locking onto the concept as a general means of cutting government revenue.

Trade-Offs

The other government bill discussed was C-14, dealing with the Agreement on Internal Trade. Lake deigned to speak to the content of the bill, but somehow dismissed Guy Caron's valid questions about the effect of the AIT as irrelevant to a bill designed to alter it. Caron then discussed the difference between desirable harmonization of standards and unacceptable intrusion on a province's ability to legislate in the interest of its citizens, while Dennis Bevington noted that northern regions are particularly vulnerable to having easy work skimmed off by outside bidders (leaving no local capacity to do needed work).

In Brief

Chris Charlton introduced one private member's bill to allow CPP claimants to receive arrears for more than the current limit of 11 months, and another to make public information about Stelco's acquisition by US Steel. Charlie Angus highlighted the information commissioner's warnings about the Cons' interference in access to what should be public information. Nycole Turmel raised a proposal for health-care discussions with the provinces which the Cons obviously decided to ignore, while Libby Davies wondered why no progress has been made on prescription drugs as promised when the last 10-year agreement was signed. Jack Harris pointed out that the lone source the Cons have pointed to in support of their train wreck of an omnibus crime bill had in fact criticized their heavy-headed approach. Alexandre Boulerice compared the patronage appointment of Jean-Pierre Blackburn to the history of Alfonso Gagliano and other Lib outrages. Yvon Godin questioned Con MP Bernard Valcourt's position that any worker without a grade 12 education should be ineligible for EI benefits. Joe Comartin called for the answer to the traditional Thursday scheduling question to be less politicized - to no avail based on Peter Van Loan's spin-heavy response. Leon Benoit introduced a motion on CCSVI treatment for MS, with Anne Minh-Thu Quach taking care to ensure any further action is based on evidence before indicating the NDP's agreement. Rathika Sitsabaiesan asked what the Cons are doing to try to rein in student debt, and was informed by Kellie Leitch that the plan is...to raise the amount of debt permitted under the federal student loan program. And John McKay questioned whether the Cons cared in the slightest about the rule of law when it came to the execution of Moammar Gadhafi - with Deepak Obhrai's response raising more questions than it answered.