Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kathy Sheridan discusses why it's well past time to ensure billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, while Graeme Wearden and Heather Stewart report on a new poll showing that even a majority of millionaires view extreme wealth concentration as a threat to democracy. And Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng highlight how the U.S.' oligarchy is past putting even a facade of caring about anything other than its own concentration of wealth and power, while Filipe Campante and Raymond Fisman note that crony capitalism invariably produces worse results for everybody other than the few members of the regime's inner circle.  

- Meanwhile, Tom Parkin points out the stark difference between anti-tax rhetoric in theory and practice, as workers earning up to $150,000 pay less tax in British Columbia than Alberta while only the richest pay less under a right-wing government. 

- Nora Loreto discusses how our political and economic system has been designed to squeeze workers and remove supports in order to ensure people are easily exploited by the rich. And Emma Paling notes that the U.S. has been dictating the terms of Canadian politics for decades at the expense of our sovereignty and well-being. 

- Mihai Andrei writes about new research showing the connection between hard-right ideology and systemic misinformation even before the social media takeover by regressive forces. 

- Finally, Gordon Brown offers a warning to Donald Trump about the dangers of abandoning the World Health Organization when countries' interests in fighting disease are so closely aligned. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mark Lipsitch et al. examine the current state of knowledge about COVID breakthrough infections and the public health measures still needed to avoid them. Kenyon Wallace and Ed Tubb highlight the dangers of new waves of deadly viral spread in long-term care homes which are wrongly assuming that vaccination is the only protection residents need, while Carly Weeks notes that experts are calling for limitations on mass gatherings. 

- Mariana Mazzucato and Ilona Kickbusch discuss the consequences of putting insufficient resources toward public health on a global scale. And Nora Loreto writes that media misdiagnosis has made it far more difficult to encourage people to contribute to the prevention and cure of COVID spread.

- Meanwhile, Steven Lewis writes that even before taking account the looming fifth COVID wave, the Moe government's insistence on throwing money at corporate operators is doomed to failure as a means of addressing surgical waitlists.

- D.T. Cochrane discusses the continued income inequality and wealth concentration which are allowing the rich to exercise ever more control over the rest of us. And Michael Roberts writes about the multiple dimensions and global reach of inequality. 

- David Sirota, Julia Rock and Andrew Perez report on the efforts by Amazon and other employers to ensure they can coerce employees to stay in unsafe work environments under penalty of termination - a power which resulted in the death of six Amazon workers this week.

- Finally, Kristin Annable, Josh Hoffman and Caroline Barghout investigate hundreds of deaths in police custody, and find dozens of examples of people detained while intoxicated"for their own safety" who died as a result. 

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Anya Zoledziowski discusses how we're only facing a third wave of COVID-19 due to avoidable political choices, while the Globe and Mail's editorial board laments the epidemic of political negligence which has resulted in severe consequences for public health and welfare. Elizabeth Payne reports on the painful choices facing health professionals as serious coronavirus cases swamp an already-stressed health care system. Adam Miller points out that we need to revise our assumptions as to what's safe based on the spread of more easily transmissible and more dangerous variants, while Bhinder Sajan reports on the reduced room for error. And a group of experts, doctors and citizens is circulating a petition to finally shift to a COVID-zero strategy to keep people healthy and safe, while Ian Welsh recognizes that it's been obvious from the beginning how that was the only viable choice if we value people's lives. 

- Meanwhile, Tonda MacCharles writes about the reality that individual vaccination doesn't mean that anybody can go back to living as if the pandemic didn't exist.

- BBC News reports on the WHO's desperate plea for wealthy countries to prioritize vaccine availability around the globe over profits for manufacturers. And Linda McQuaig offers a reminder that the only way to ensure a secure supply of medicine is to maintain our own, rather than hoping we can throw enough money and privileges at big pharma to bump us ahead of other countries.

- Finally, Carlito Pablo discusses how work from home during the course of the COVID pandemic has affected productivity - concluding that the result has included both more production, and longer hours. And Rick Salutin writes about the continued refusal of Doug Ford (and other politicians) to put sick leave in place to allow workers to stay home and keep people healthy.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Alex Himelfarb discusses why a proportional electoral system can be expected to produce better and more representative public policy:

The adversarial approach often means major policy lurches when the government changes. For example, the Harper government undid some important initiatives of the previous government, including the Kelowna Accord, signed by all provinces and aboriginal leaders, and child care agreements signed by all provinces, to name a couple. Now we are watching the current Liberal majority spending much of its legislative time undoing Harper government initiatives (e.g., restoring the census, and undoing various refugee and immigration policies). We see similar lurches with virtually every change of government, but especially when that change also represents a significant shift in ideology.

These policy lurches belie the claims that our FPTP system offers stability. They undermine our capacity for long-term planning, even long-term thinking, and waste considerable legislative time effectively going around in circles. Such policy lurches are far less common in countries with more proportional systems, where cross-party co-operation is the norm. It’s not surprising, therefore, that political scientist Arend Lijphart (2012), who has undertaken the most extensive comparison of policy outcomes in countries with differing electoral systems, found that for those issues that require a long view and policy continuity, countries with proportional systems—where coalitions are the norm—outperform FPTP countries.

For example, countries with proportional systems score significantly higher on Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index, which measures how well human health and ecosystems are protected. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. Countries using PR were more ready to pay the price of strong environmental policies, more likely to use renewable energy, and therefore produced a lower share of carbon emissions (Orellana, 2014; Cohen, 2010). The greater co-operation and continuity in proportional systems evidently yield environmental dividends.
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Orellana further argues that PR-elected governments are less inclined to “quick-fix” solutions and, because of the greater diversity of their governments and parliaments, more open to policy innovation.   For example. they are more likely to have adapted their welfare and tax policies to changes in the economy and labour market.  Orellana also demonstrates that they tend to be policy leaders on highly sensitive issues such as assisted dying, LGBT rights and freedom to marry.  This openness to change and policy innovation is particularly relevant in a fast-changing world where old nostrums and standard practices are increasingly part of the problem. It should be no surprise, then, Orellana (2014; 2016) and Lijphart (1994; 2012) also find better fiscal performance in countries with PR. There is even some evidence, though it is admittedly mixed, that countries with PR produce more robust economic growth (Knutsen, 2011).
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Public policy can only benefit from a system that is less vulnerable to special interests, in which every vote influences the outcome; a system that yields more diverse representation reflective of the diverse values and interests of the electorate, and promotes less adversarial elections and more co-operative parliaments. Governments elected by PR would experience fewer policy lurches, take a longer view, be more responsive to the interests of the many, and even, arguably, more creative and open to policy innovation.

- David Madland points out how a modernized system of labour laws (including more widespread multi-employer bargaining) would produce far better outcomes for workers. Augusta Dwyer writes that a shorter work day could result in substantially improved productivity to go with an improved quality of life. And both Rana Foroohar and Peter Fleming observe that unions need to play a central role in defining and improving working conditions.

- Matt Huber argues that progressives shouldn't settle for a market-based frame in discussing why and how we need to combat climate change. And David Suzuki points out the folly in assuming we can dig our way out of the environmental hole we're now facing.

- Finally, CBC reports on the World Health Organization's recommended tax on sugary drinks as a means to improve public health outcomes.