Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Thomas Frank discusses the corporate takeover of U.S. politics - and how even nominally left-oriented parties are willing to go along with the corporate position even as voters regularly demand something else:

One of the reasons the phrase appealed to me, 17 years ago, was my belief back then that there was something essentially brutal about raw capitalism; if the nation was to suppress the regulations and the workers’ organizations that had tamed the beast over the years—even if we did so with the best of intentions—the economy would return quite naturally to its savage, Gilded Age habits. Mainstream opinion of the 1990s held the exact opposite, however: That those regulations and those workers’ organizations were no longer needed because we had entered a “New Economy” in which the old rules no longer applied. Perfect information was building perfect markets wherever you turned. The Dow and the NASDAQ were mounting toward unbelievable highs, and our leaders assured us that it was all because history had turned a corner and the common people had been financially enlightened in some miraculous way.

Has there ever been an episode of economic mania so delusional and, ultimately, so destructive? In those days, CEO salaries were smashing every precedent in living memory and yet here were our thought leaders, telling us that what was really happening was a consummation of the nation’s democratic promise. For me, meanwhile, Mark Twain’s phrase seemed exact, almost clinical: What everyone thought to be a golden age was in fact merely gilded.
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In 1992, one might conclude, the nation chose to reverse the plutocratizing effects of neoliberalism. What we got was something else—a soft Reaganism that admitted, “the era of big government is over.” And that’s why, in the months and years to come, we will see Clinton loyalists do all they can to delete that New Gilded Age from memory even as they rail against the current New Gilded Age. Were we to judge Bill Clinton by the standards of 1992, his presidency was something of a failure, eight years of deregulation and New Economy platitudes. If we judge him by the rich rewards that his booming stock market showered on the wealthy, however, his term in the White House was a towering success.

The original Gilded Age ended when Democrats and Republicans came together around the old populist program of financial regulation, antitrust enforcement, income tax, and legitimacy for organized labor. This time around there is no end in sight, because Republicans and Democrats have come together on a program that is almost the opposite—dismantling the regulatory state at the behest of the One Percent while assuring an ever angrier public that they feel our pain, that they’re Putting People First, that they’d be great to have a beer with, that Yes We Can. The heart sickens at the thought of these many long years of fake populism, and the stomach turns to imagine how little time there is before we are swept up in it all over again.

- Alan Pyke notes that greater unemployment benefits - of the type so often slashed in the name of forcing workers to lower their expectations - work wonders in reducing suicide rates, while the CBC points out that social assistance in Canada falls far short of what people need to meet even basic nutritional requirements. And the Broadbent Institute expands on the idea of a youth job guarantee to give young workers a fair chance to build a career.

- Roxanne Dubois discusses the move toward community unionism designed to make sure workers can be engaged with the labour movement - and protected by some collective strength - even without working in certified workplaces.

- Alison highlights how the Cons are continuing to encourage the use of temporary foreign workers to fill the few jobs promised as the result of the pipeline construction they so consistently demand. And Dan Leger skewers the Cons' wilful blindness to the costs of a single-minded obsession with resource extraction.

- Shorter Naomi Lakritz: In Peter MacKay's defence, isn't he at least as factually wrong as he is sexist?

- The Star calls for a functional access-to-information regime to replace the Cons' tendency toward total secrecy. But Michael Harris observes that the Cons seem perfectly happy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fabricating an ad-based reality, while making no effort to inform either themselves or the public of what's actually happening.

- Finally, Will Hutton looks at the UK's National Health Service as another highly-valued public service which is being undermined in preparation for a fire sale:

Over the last six months, I've got to know the interior workings of UCH's leukaemia wards better than I, or any reader, would ever want. You just offer thanks that there is such a system on hand for the crisis my family and others are going through. And that the leukaemia wards are embedded in a general hospital with such depth of expertise and range of resource. Whatever cruel side-effects that emerge, there are experts and teams on hand to take charge as the needs arise. It is integrated 21st-century healthcare. It saves lives.

It is also value-driven, as is the case with all great organisations. Curing leukaemia often culminates in a bone marrow transplant, with the molecular structure of the donor's bone marrow carefully matched with that of the recipient. Only healthy new bone marrow will prevent the cancer from reappearing. But that needs donors. The Anthony Nolan Trust has more than half-a-million volunteers who give their bone marrow and blood for free; the bigger the pool, the better the chance of a match, and thus of survival. They are unsung heroes and heroines, the best of humanity.

These donors are animated by the same value system as the NHS. The nurses who inspect stools and the consultants who mastermind the cocktail of drugs are united by the drive to cure, to give health and life. They are givers and sharers. They know humanity demands solidarity, empathy and looking out for each other – or else, who are you?

Of course they are imperfect and sometimes make mistakes. The sums have to add up, as they do in any organisation, but they add up to serve this larger purpose. You give your bone marrow for free to a service that provides health for free, funded by commonly created resources. Life-threatening disease is a lottery. Before this existential truth we stand together. Profit maximisation cannot be the value system at the heart of our healthcare system.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Bryce Covert rightly challenges the claim that poverty bears any relationship to an unwillingness to work - along with other attempts to blame the poor for their condition:

In fact, the majority of able-bodied, adult, non-elderly poor people worked in 2012, according to a data analysis by economist Jared Bernstein. There were about 21 million non-disabled, poor adults that year, and about half of them, or 11 million, worked. Another 3 million didn’t work because they were in school. If those in school are taken out of the picture, 57 percent of the poor people we would expect to work did so. Five million didn’t work because they had an illness or disability.
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It’s not hard to see why someone might work and still end up poor. Working a minimum wage job full time brings in about $14,500 a year, which leaves a parent of two $3,000 below the poverty line. The minimum wage isn’t enough to afford rent in any state in the country. This wasn’t always the case. In the 1960s, the minimum wage kept that family of three out of poverty, and even in the 1970s it kept a family of two above the line. Raising the wage would lift millions out of poverty and reduce the poverty rate.

There are other misconceptions about why the poor end up poor. Some think they bring hardship on themselves by being unwise with their money. But the poor spend a smaller percentage of their budgets on eating out and entertainment while spending more on the necessities than their better off peers. And while both rich and middle class Americans have increased their spending habits since the recession, the poorest have actually cut back.

- Meanwhile, Kayle Hatt reviews a Parliamentary study into youth unemployment and finds little to help young Canadians looking to start their careers:

A comprehensive made-in-Canada youth guarantee would be one good way to tackle our youth unemployment problem.

Other ideas to actually tackle youth unemployment that the committee heard in testimony: CCPA suggested, among other things, to expand federally funded summer youth employment programs, to set aside a portion of jobs in federally funded infrastructure programs for youth and hiring subsidies in certain areas. Several commentators, including CCPA’s Armine Yalnizyan and the Canadian Labour Congress, suggested mobility funding for youth who were moving to look for work.

It seems that the Finance committee, however, wasn’t looking for big ideas and possible solutions to address youth unemployment if it meant labour market interventions or actually spending money on the issue.

That’s a shame because the status quo isn’t working.

- But then, as Megan Leslie points out, the Cons have been going to ridiculous lengths to prevent Parliament from discussing other than Stephen Harper's talking points on any issue.

- Steve Rennie reports on Jason Kenney's latest move to make temporary foreign workers subject to an even more tenuous stay in Canada - while also exposing the complete lack of inspections which makes it clear the Cons have never taken employer abuse seriously. Paula Simons points out that additional churn doesn't help anybody - and least of all the workers being exploited. And Syed Hussan highlights the Cons' propensity for locking up immigrants without any fair review process.

- Finally, Roderick Benns wonders when recognition of the importance of the social determinants of health will spread past the medical profession.

Happy [REDACTED] Day!

Building on Nickie's idea, I figured we'll all feel a bit more festive this Canada Day using a Canadian flag as approved and redacted by the Cons and their Public Safety department.

Enjoy!

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Jackson reviews the OECD's economic recommendations for Canada - featuring a much-needed call for fair taxes on stock options:

Special tax breaks for stock options primarily benefit senior corporate executives, especially CEOs of large public companies who are commonly given the right to buy shares in the future at heavily discounted prices. Options make up a big slice of the total compensation of senior corporate executives.

90% of the benefits of the stock options tax break go to the top 1% of taxpayers. The stock options tax break costs the federal government $785 million per year, according to the Department of Finance.

Stock options are not only unfair, they are also economically destructive in that they encourage corporate executives to boost short-term profits just before options become due. This comes at the cost of long term corporate performance according to Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

- Meanwhile, Robert Reich points out a few more corporate leaders who are sounding the alarm about the threat of inequality. Paul Krugman does some quick math as to how austerity continues to damage the global economy. And Paul Buchheit lists a few of the more egregious anti-equality policies which are serving to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everybody else in the U.S.

- Noel Ortega writes that any discussion of a more sustainable, more equal economy needs to take into account our planet's ecological limits - most notably the dangers of climate change. Chris Rose and John Upton both discuss Nicholas Stern's observation that we may be severely underestimating the damage we're doing by using our atmosphere as a dumping ground for greenhouse gases. And Kat Sieniuc discusses how climate change is also at the top of the list of issues which demand policy action as a matter of protecting public health.

- Paul Thomas reminds us that it's thoroughly self-defeating to trading our ability to shape policy in the long run for short-term material gains. And Hopi Sen offers some rules for aspiring politicians.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey and the Beaverton stand out from the pack in commenting on Peter MacKay's view of female judges.

Musical interlude

Blue Rodeo - Til I Am Myself Again

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Rick Salutin discusses how corruption has become endemic in the global economy as an inevitable consequence of me-first values:

You wouldn't have those CEO pig-outs absent neo-liberalism's moral model: get rich not just quick but hugely. As Kevin O'Leary loves saying, and CBC plasters on its promos: God put us here to get rich. Note it's a public broadcaster where he barks that and no one contests it. (I consider Amanda Lang's ripostes pro forma.)

Since there's no counter model (excluding, maybe, the pope) it becomes almost embarrassing not to grab for all you can get, legality be damned. The mentality seeps into areas like pro sports and the World Cup, with PED corruption, game fixing -- and trickles down to kids. There's also a sort of pre-emptive political corruption, where leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have their eye on the vast returns available after they leave office, through their own foundations, etc., as long as they don't offend the corporate titans who are the donors. But none of it would thrive without the grotesque, tantalizing wealth inequalities that equate with neoliberalism.

Why anyone thought privatizing huge chunks of public wealth and letting the profit motive slither all over them would mean less corruption evades me, along with thinking Ontario's Liberals are the beginning and end of the problem. Corruption may always be with us but it comes in different forms. We're currently driving the globalization-privatization model right off a cliff.

- Meanwhile, Jacques Leslie takes note of Gabriel Zucman's work on the widespread abuse of tax havens. And in a sign of just how thoroughly the service-to-the-rich is becoming entrenched, CBC reports on the latest WikiLeaks revelations - showing Canada among a group of countries negotiating an agreement to prevent governments from reining in financial-sector abuses.

- In case there was any doubt that fair tax increases can form part of a viable electoral strategy, Linda McQuaig argues that Ontario's recent experience - featuring both high-income surtaxes implemented in a minority provincial Parliament, and a decisive election defeat for the party insisting on cuts all around - should put that to rest.

- Stephen Maher reports on impending legal challenges to the Unfair Elections Act. But Leslie MacKinnon reminds us that the Cons will doggedly fight voting rights in any form and in the most intrusive way possible - most recently by waiting until four by-elections were in full swing before seeking a stay of a ruling extending voting rights to Canadians living abroad.

- James Hutt writes about the dangers of increasingly privatized health care. And Iglika Ivanova responds to some anti-teacher spin from B.C.'s Liberal government by pointing out that teachers - like most public servants - have been receiving far less than their fair share from economic growth.

- Finally, Wade Rowland makes the case that a stronger CBC would do wonders for all kinds of broadcasters in Canada.

New column day

Here, offering a suggestion as to how to give Saskatchewan workers significantly more control over their working hours than they hold today.

For further reading...
- Again, the OECD report recommending a "right to ask" for flexible hours is here (PDF). And the UK already has similar legislation.
- The Saskatchewan Employment Act is available online here. And of particular note for the purposes of today's column, see sections 2-11 to 2-14 which provide the only protection for working hours, as well as section 2-63 which creates an employee notice requirement.
- Finally, for those wanting to delve into the case law on changes in hours, there are examples of a unilateral change in hours being treated as a constructive dismissal: see here and here. But even that only entitles an employee to receive pay in lieu of notice for having been terminated. And see here for an example as to how an employer can effectively insulate itself from any responsibility take employee availability into account (absent some legal protection to the contrary).

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kathleen Geier discusses the U.S.' culture of overwork and its human toll:

There is abundant evidence that long working hours is incredibly dangerous from a public health perspective. Fatigued or sleep-deprived workers who drive or operate heavy machinery are an obvious menace to public safety, but there are other health costs associated with overwork as well. A 2004 Center for Disease Control report found that excessive overtime was associated with “poorer perceived general health, increased injury rates, more illnesses, and increased mortality,” and a 2008 study linked long work hours to depression and anxiety. Studies have also shown a strong association between working long hours and developing coronary heart disease.

In its culture of overwork, the United States is very much an outlier, when compared to other industrially advanced nations. Unlike much of Europe, we don’t mandate paid vacations or make it illegal for employees to work more than forty-eight hours a week. The usual justification for American employers’ massive overtime requirements is that they enhance “productivity,” but evidence actually suggests that the opposite is true.
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Americans began agitating for the right to an eight-hour workday over 200 years ago. Countless workers fought and died for that right before it was institutionalized under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. But, sadly, it looks like this is one battle that we all must continue to fight.

- Meanwhile, Lynn Vavreck helps to explain how wealth may lead to a perceived need for more wealth by pointing out how one's definition of "rich" changes at different income levels. The OECD has some suggestions to address the employer-heavy bias in U.S. employment law (h/t to Miles Corak). And Andre Cote comments on the difference a strong child-care system could make in Canada compared to the current alternative:

Let’s think about the downstream implications of not funding child care.

First, there is a big economic impact, as the lack of care tends to reduce the workforce participation rate of mothers with young children. For instance, 77% of mothers with infants work in Québec, compared with 70% in the rest of Canada. Fewer working moms is bad for businesses and for government tax revenues, which fund services…like child care. Some evidence suggests Quebec’s program actually pays for itself.

Second, we forego the educational benefits of providing child care and early learning – especially when targeted at lower-income families. The “human capital” early learning creates – i.e. more able workers later in life – pays dividends by supporting Canada’s productivity and competitiveness.

Third, it has a huge impact on the careers of parents who stay home (again, mostly women). Not only is it demotivating to go back to the office to find that your office-mates have all been promoted ahead of you, but it limits future advancement and earnings potential. For many career-oriented women, it’s a reason to delay having kids, or not to have them at all.

- The CP takes a look at Canadians' views on temporary foreign workers, and finds that the public shares the goal of giving easily-exploited workers the opportunity to build a life in Canada (while recognizing the need to hold employers accountable for abuses).

- Tim Harper discusses how a rigged approval process for the Northern Gateway pipeline did nothing to earn any genuine social license. Frances Russell takes a look at the role British Columbians may play in stopping the Gateway, while Bill Tieleman argues that the 2015 federal election will likely be the decisive factor in determining whether or not it it will ever be built. And PressProgress reminds us why we shouldn't trust the pro-pipeline spinmeisters.

- Finally, Michael Harris writes that Canada's Constitution seems to have earned an increasingly prominent place on the Cons' enemies list.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Outbound cats.

!!!***BREAKING***!!! THE FIX IS STILL IN!!!

Plenty of commentators theorized this week that the Cons might pay some heed to public opinion when it comes to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

But let's remember where this process all started: from the beginning, the Cons consistently decreed that nobody was permitted to say "no". And we can hardly be surprised that they've ended a review process which was never intended to allow for any other answer by decreeing that Enbridge shall have its way.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Following up on this morning's post, George Monbiot discusses the need for a progressive movement which goes beyond pointing out dangers to offer the promise of better things to come:

Twenty years of research, comprehensively ignored by these parties, reveals that shifts such as privatisation and cutting essential public services strongly promote people's extrinsic values (an attraction to power, prestige, image and status) while suppressing intrinsic values (intimacy, kindness, self-acceptance, independent thought and action). As extrinsic values are powerfully linked to conservative politics, pursuing policies that reinforce them is blatantly self-destructive.

One of the drivers of extrinsic values is a sense of threat. Experimental work suggests that when fears are whipped up, they trigger an instinctive survival response. You suppress your concern for other people and focus on your own interests. Conservative strategists seem to know this, which is why they emphasise crime, terrorism, deficits and immigration.
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None of this is to suggest that we should not discuss the threats or pretend that the crises faced by this magnificent planet are not happening. Or that we should cease to employ rigorous research and statistics. What it means is that we should embed both the awareness of these threats and their scientific description in a different framework: one that emphasises the joy and awe to be found in the marvels at risk; one that proposes a better world, rather than (if we work really hard for it), just a slightly-less-shitty-one-than-there-would-otherwise-have-been.

- And Laurie Monsebraaten reports on the hope that a consensus to move toward income equality is within reach.

- Robert Reich calls out three right-wing lies about poverty, while Ben Phillips notes that fighting poverty should be a matter of right and wrong rather than left and right in the first place. And Danielle Kurtzleben writes that poverty is just as incompatible with equality of opportunity as it is with fair outcomes:

In a new article in the spring issue of the Princeton University journal The Future of Children (and highlighted by the Brookings social mobility blog), researchers show that poverty is directly correlated to kindergarten performance. Children who live in poverty have far lower performance than their richer peers across a variety of measures, and those who live in near poverty in turn have dramatically worse performance than middle-class peers. The poorest kids, for example, are less than one-third as likely as middle-class kids to recognize letters.
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Early academic achievement can have lifelong effects. Harvard economist Raj Chetty found in a 2010 study that moving from an average to an excellent kindergarten teacher can boost a student's later work earnings by $1,000 per year on average. And Chetty and fellow economists from Harvard and Berkeley wrote in a wide-ranging study on economic mobility this year that primary education is one of the key factors in moving people up the ladder.

It's not that money directly buys better outcomes. Having extra cash does mean that adults can, for example, better invest in kids' development with games and toys at young ages and have more time to spend with kids. But the effects are also less direct, as growing up poor can create psychological stress and hurt development.

- Meanwhile, Jordon Cooper discusses the link between secure housing and mental health.

- Finally, Susan Adams refutes any justification for outsized CEO pay, pointing out that businesses which pay more money to their top executive are actually rewarded with worse performance. And Mariana Mazzucato observes that we should be working on developing far more entrepreneurial government - and coddling far less private-sector rent-seeking than we do now.

On greatness

Plenty of commentators have pointed to Dean Beeby's report on public consultations about Canada's most inspiring people as evidence that Stephen Harper and his Cons couldn't be much further from the mark. And that point is fair enough on its own.

But it's worth noting something else as well: respondents to the Canadian Heritage Department's survey seem to have drawn a close link between political greatness, and signature achievements in institution-building:

The Canadian Heritage Department extracted a Top 10 list for an April 29 briefing note for the minister, Shelly Glover.

Only one clearly identifiable Conservative appears: Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, in eighth place.

The list was topped by former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, followed by marathon-of-hope runner Terry Fox; NDP leader Tommy Douglas; former Liberal prime minister Lester B. Pearson; astronaut Chris Hadfield; environmental activist David Suzuki; NDP leader Jack Layton; Sir. John A.; hockey legend Wayne Gretzky; and Romeo Dallaire, the soldier and Liberal senator who recently announced his resignation.

The consultation also asked which of Canada’s accomplishments of the last 150 years “make you most proud to be a Canadian?”

Medicare topped that list, followed by peacekeeping, then the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms at No. 3.

The Conservative government, which has recently been buffeted by a series of Charter-based losses at the Supreme Court of Canada, did not mark the 25th anniversary of the Charter in 2007, nor the 30th in 2012.

The rest of the accomplishments list, in order: contribution to the Second World War; the Canadarm; multiculturalism; contribution to the First World War; bilingualism; space exploration; and the Constitution Act of 1982.

And it's also noteworthy who's missing: relatively recent, long-serving politicians whose time was marked mostly by cuts and tinkering (Jean Chretien), or whose big plans produced few or negative results (Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper). In effect, with the exception of Jack Layton, respondents didn't see anything about the last 20-plus years of Canadian politics to be the least bit inspiring.

Which leads to an obvious question: if we're indeed inspired by big ideas and strong principles, then why aren't there more of those on offer in our current political system?

It's well and good to recognize in retrospect the importance of Medicare, the Charter, multiculturalism and bilingualism. But in recent election cycles, anything of comparable ambition has been not only left off the table, but labeled unfit for political consumption: anybody proposing a new social program or constitutional change is immediately shouted down for trying to accomplish something which isn't easy, quick and poll-tested.

Which serves Stephen Harper and his ilk fairly well in the long run. If Harper is doomed to the "uninspiring" pile (due to the fact that his plans for giant pipelines, climate obstruction and capacity slashing tilt distinctly toward the negative side of the ledger), he'll probably accept as a second-best outcome a legacy of chipping away at past accomplishments and salting the earth so that nothing inspiring can ever grow again.

But it's less clear why anybody else should be willing to accept that inspiring politics (as a matter of setting and meeting big public goals, not merely personal branding) should be a thing of the past. And any current politician wanting to join the list of leaders who have made a lasting impact should be laying the groundwork to do more than simply outlast one or two opponents an election at a time.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Katie Allen discusses the Equality Trust's research into tax rates in the UK - which shows that the poor actually pay the highest share of their income in taxes, even as the public has been led to believe the opposite:

The poorest 10% of households pay eight percentage points more of their income in all taxes than the richest – 43% compared to 35%, according to a report from the Equality Trust.

The thinktank highlights what it sees as a gulf between perceptions of the tax system and reality. Its poll, conducted with Ipsos Mori found that nearly seven in ten people believe that households in the highest 10% income group pay more of their income in tax than those in the lowest 10%.

The survey of more than 1,000 people also found a strong majority – 96% – believe that the tax system should be more progressive than is currently the case.

- But then, the poor can hardly afford to match the constant PR offensive put on by the corporate elite to demand preferential treatment. Which leads to Maria Konnikova's observation that poverty presents far more obstacles that a lack of money alone:

When we think of poverty, we tend to think about money in isolation: How much does she earn? Is that above or below the poverty line? But the financial part of the equation may not be the single most important factor. “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity,” Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard who is a co-author of the book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” tells me, “is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.”

“There are three types of poverty,” he says. “There’s money poverty, there’s time poverty, and there’s bandwidth poverty.” The first is the type we typically associate with the word. The second occurs when the time debt of the sort I incurred starts to pile up.

And the third is the type of attention shortage that is fed by the other two: If I’m focused on the immediate deadline, I don’t have the cognitive resources to spend on mundane tasks or later deadlines. If I’m short on money, I can’t stop thinking about today’s expenses — never mind those in the future. In both cases, I end up making decisions that leave me worse off because I lack the ability to focus properly on anything other than what’s staring me in the face right now, at this exact moment.

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(T)he most unfair aspect of the whole thing is that the bandwidth tax doesn’t affect everyone equally. If you aren’t your fully strategic self all the time, so be it. If I miss one deadline — or even two — it’s far from the end of the world. But if I’m also poor in the traditional sense? Suddenly, the lack of time has a nonlinear, compounding effect: My bandwidth isn’t just a bit more taxed. The tax is completely off the charts, and I have little recourse to repair the damage.
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The poor are under a deadline that never lifts, pressure that can’t be relieved. If I am poor, I work or I churn until decisions like buying lottery tickets begin to seem like attractive alternatives. I lack the time to calculate the odds and think of alternative uses for my money.
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If poverty is about time and mental bandwidth as well as money, how does this change how we combat its effects? “When we think about programs for the poor, we don’t ever think, hey, let’s give them programs that don’t use a lot of bandwidth,” says Mr. Mullainathan. Instead, we fault people for failing to sign up for programs that are ostensibly available, even though we don’t factor in the time and cognitive capacity they need to get past even the first step.

- Conversely, an excess of concentrated money tends to beget brand-new ways of distorting the economy. And Janet McFarland reports on a study by Michael Wolfson, Mike Veall and Neil Brooks which finds that past measures likely underestimate inequality in Canada by failing to take into account money funneled through privately-held corporations:

Using data that includes CCPCs changes the picture of Canada’s top income earners because these are the people most likely to set them up. Only 5 per cent of people in the bottom half of income earners own a stake in a CCPC, and the study shows that, over the past decade, up to 80 per cent of those in the top 0.01 per cent of income earners owned a stake in a CCPC. Some people own stakes in four or more CCPCs, the report shows.

CCPCs are typically used to hold a private business, so they could be created by the owner of a store or restaurant to incorporate the business. Dr. Wolfson said they are also legally used by doctors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals as a way to incorporate their business activities, allowing the corporation to be paid income rather than having the individuals paid in the form of salaries.

There can be many advantages to having income go into a corporation rather than receiving it as a salary, including the ability to defer income, split income with a spouse, and reduce capital gains tax.

Researchers have long found it difficult to measure income for top earners and that has led to an inaccurate picture of the degree of income inequality between the rich and the poor. Including CCPCs has given a better portrait of high income earners and revealed the sizeable impact of these private holdings.

The report shows that income for the top 10 per cent of earners increased an average of 16 per cent when CCPCs were included in the income data. The increase was even more dramatic for those in the top 0.1 per cent. Their average income rose to $2.1-million when CCPCs were taken into account, compared with $1.3-million if CCPCs were excluded. That’s a difference of 55 per cent.

- Shannon Gormley comments on how the Harper Cons' paranoia is leading Canada toward a policy of citizenship-stripping normally applied by only the world's worst human-rights abusers.

- Finally, Alice Funke provides a thorough review of what actually happened in Ontario's provincial election.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Margaret Somers and Fred Block write about Karl Polanyi's critique of the free-market myth and its increased relevance today:

(F)ree-market rhetoric is a giant smokescreen designed to hide the dependence of business profits on conditions secured by government. So, for example, our giant financial institutions insist that they should be free of meddlesome regulations while they depend on continuing access to cheap credit—in good times and bad—from the Federal Reserve. Our pharmaceutical firms have successfully resisted any government limits on their price-setting ability at the same time that they rely on government grants of monopolies through the patent system. And, of course, the compliance of employees with the demands of their managers is maintained by police, judges, and an elaborate structure of legal rules.

Polanyi effectively brings the role of government and politics into the center of the analysis of market economies. And in doing so, he opens up possibilities that are often obscured in other currents of left thought. If regulations are always necessary to create markets, we must not discuss regulation versus deregulation but rather what kinds of regulations we prefer: those designed to benefit wealth and capital, or those that benefit the public and common good? Similarly, since the rights or lack of rights that employees have at the workplace are always defined by the legal system, we must not ask whether the law should organize the labor market but rather what kind of rules and rights should be entailed in these laws—those that recognize that it is the skills and talents of employees that make firms productive, or those that rig the game in favor of employers and private profits?
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There is too much public discourse, even within the Democratic Party, that accepts and even propagates the right-wing propaganda that a restoration of economic growth requires austerity and greater deference to the needs of business. The reality is that austerity usually results in rent-seeking behavior, with the consequence of further stagnation and crises rather than productive investment. Polanyi teaches us that periods of prosperity and rising living standards, by contrast, were a direct result of democratic gains in politics and civil society. The greatest prosperity in living memory in Europe and the United States came during the social democratic moment—in the 1950s and 1960s—when the constraints on business were the greatest. In short, more democracy and more economic justice are the necessary foundations for the path to socialism and a more vibrant, prosperous, and sustainable economy.

- And Elias Isquith interviews Shar Habibi about the role of privatization in simultaneously eroding public services and linin the pockets of the wealthy:

What did you find when you examined privatization/government outsourcing?

What this report really looked [at] was the effects of government outsourcing, at the local and state levels, on jobs and the impacts it has on the community and ultimately on the issue of income inequality. What we see is that … when state or local government outsources, these jobs are no longer good, public-sector jobs that provide a decent wage and benefits, but instead become jobs for a contractor that pay very low wages and typically have very few or no benefits. And really what is kind of alarming about this is [that] outsourcing public services sets off a downward spiral in which reduced worker wages and benefits can hurt the local economy and the overall stability of middle- and working-class communities. By paying family-supporting wages and providing important benefits like health insurance and sick leave, governments have historically created what we’re calling “intentional ladders of opportunity” to allow workers and their families to reach the middle class. And this has been especially true for women and African-Americans, for whom the public sector has been a source of stable, middle-class careers. Unfortunately low-road government contracts reverse this dynamic. So while corporations rake in increasing profits through taxpayer dollars and while CEO compensation continues to soar, the examples in our report show that the workers employed by state and local government contractors receive those low wages and few benefits.
...
How big of a role do you think privatization plays in the larger phenomenon of growing inequality?

I think that it’s often overlooked, but it’s a sizable piece of the puzzle … We don’t have exact numbers of how many workers this affects because state and local governments aren’t keeping good, systematic records of this (and fixing that is one of our recommendations in the report) but … we do know on the federal level there are three times as many contract workers as civil-service workers and so we also know that there are about 14.5 million full-time, and almost 5 million part-time, state and local government workers. So if the proportion is anything near the federal ratio of contract-to-direct-government-worker, that’s millions of jobs that we’re talking about. There’s also some very rough estimates that total state and local procurement can be valued around $1-1.5 trillion — that’s a very crude estimate. But contracting anywhere approaching that fiscal magnitude means millions of jobs are being created through state and local contracting. So when states and local governments use low-road contractors that slash wages and benefits and create low-wage jobs, this is really a factor in growing income inequality and the disappearing middle class. It’s often overlooked, but it’s very significant.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman discusses how the U.S.' corporate elite has lost control of the movement it set up to take political power, then follows up with the ultimate sign of establishment desperation:

Corporations and plutocrats had a good deal going: they bankrolled politicians who talked cultural populism during campaigns, but more or less ignored all that and focused on tax cuts and deregulation after the polls closed. And Cantor fit that profile perfectly.

But now the big money has lost control; the base is demanding politicians who don’t just talk the crazy talk, but walk the crazy walk. For a couple of months the story line was that the money was regaining control, but between Cantor and Cochran that narrative has been blown out of the water.

...

How bad is it? So bad that some establishment Republicans — which means people who work for the corporate side — are pining for another run by, yes, Mitt Romney.

- But if the business sector may be having trouble controlling its political puppets, it's having rather better luck avoiding any accountability to the public at large - as David Atkins highlights how corporations are going to greater and greater lengths to avoid having to answer for the injuries they inflict on others.

- Finally, Jessica McDiarmid offers a prime example, pointing out how the rail industry is demanding that governments across Canada and the U.S. keep the public in the dark about the risk it's creating. And Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how abandoned oil wells are doing severe environmental damage by releasing methane and other gases.

On sucker's deals

Shorter Brad Wall:

But what you less-sophisticated, not-so-business-savvy people don't understand is this: when you pawn the furniture, you get CASH MONEY UP FRONT. How can that be anything but a great deal?

Update: On further reflection, this calls for a photoshop:

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne discusses the need to address inequality through our political system. But that will require significant pressure from exactly the citizens who have decided they're not well served by today's political options - and Trish Hennessy's look at Canadian voter turnout reminds us of the desperate need for improvement.

- Meanwhile, Tim Harford points out just how far we've gone in focusing on dollars over all other considerations - as even Scotland's referendum on independence is being spun mostly as a matter of dueling fiscal projections rather than community, culture or other policy questions.

- Tavia Grant's report on the deadly legacy - and continued danger - of asbestos is well worth a read, particularly for this reminder that the Cons' offical policy is to promote the material which serves as Canada's largest source of workplace deaths:

In asbestos policy, Canada is at odds with other developed countries, almost all of which have both banned asbestos and launched national campaigns to educate their citizens on its dangers.

Regarding exports and imports, Canada’s long-standing position is that “safe and controlled use” of the mineral poses little risk to human health.

Health Canada’s website maintains that chrysotile (the form of asbestos mined in Quebec) is safer than other types of asbestos, and that asbestos poses risks only when its fibres become airborne and “significant quantities” are inhaled. It plays down the causal relationship between asbestos and some forms of cancer. The website does not inform Canadians that asbestos is the No. 1 cause of work-related deaths. (In contrast, the U.S. Acting Surgeon General, Boris Lushniak, reminded the American public in April that there is no known safe level of asbestos exposure.)

Between 2006 and 2011, Canada was the only developed nation to oppose bringing asbestos under the control of the Rotterdam Convention, a United Nations-sponsored treaty, signed in 1998, that requires the exporters of hazardous substances to disclose the risks.

Indeed, the Conservative government has been a stalwart friend of the industry. “Only the Conservative party will defend this industry here and everywhere in Canada,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Quebec on the campaign trail in 2011. While the Tories were fighting international efforts to restrict trade in asbestos, the government was simultaneously spending millions to remove asbestos from the Parliament buildings and the prime minister’s residence.

- In a similar vein, PressProgress finds that the Cons' cheerleading for the oil sector has reached the point where they're trying to paint the extraction and burning of dirty fossil fuels as a win for the environment. Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada's massive subsidies to big oil (as well as the Cons' pathetic attempts to pretend they don't exist), while Mike de Souza finds that the National Energy Board is spending twice as much moving its offices into a sinkhole as it could muster for new pipeline monitoring, and the CP finds that Alberta's new environmental policy for fracking is "do what you want". And Bruce Johnstone writes that the Cons can't be taken seriously on climate change.

- Finally, David Dayen discusses the astroturf effort to challenge Elizabeth Warren's work in making student loan payments more affordable.

Musical interlude

Darren Porter - Terraforming

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Neera Tanden points out that a wide range of citizens rely on a strong safety net at one time or another - and suggests that it's long past time to start discussing how important social programs have been in our own lives:

I believe we have a historic opportunity to address poverty today, because the interests of low-income people and the middle class are converging. Median wages—the wages of middle-income earners—have been stagnant for twelve years. People recognize there is growing inequality in this country and that something is amiss when companies are doing well but people aren’t—when dividends, stock prices, and CEO salaries rise but wages don’t.

And while we have a clear opportunity to make the connection between the interests of people in poverty and the interests of the middle class, we have our work cut out for us. Conservatives have successfully pitted people in the middle against people struggling near the bottom. They are skilled at exploiting economic anger and anxiety, fear and distrust. For example, they have convinced many Americans that many people who turn to the safety net want to be on welfare rather than having a job. This mistaken notion is particularly troubling right now, when the hardest-hit communities face high unemployment rates of 20 to 30 percent. Conservatives say we have to break up the safety net or people won’t pursue jobs. But the truth is those jobs just don’t exist right now. So the real effect of these heartless policies will be more people hungry, more people homeless, and more children with fewer opportunities to succeed—children just like my brother and I.

For my family, as for many American families, the safety net was a bridge that carried us through hard times. That’s why it’s important that I tell my story.
...
When we take on the assumptions and stereotypes directly—and actually look at the lives of poor people—we see in fact that their lives are full of struggle (including the struggle to navigate a welfare system that seems designed to make it as hard as possible for people to receive benefits).

- Alex Boutilier writes that the Cons are now scrambling for accurate labour market information in an effort to figure out what to do with temporary foreign workers - after having slashed exactly that type of data collection as part of their war on evidence. But as Andrew Coyne points out, there's a fairly obvious answer if the Cons are willing to let newly-arrived workers have a future in Canada by eliminating the "temporary" part of their designation, rather than wanting to make sure they remain disposable at an employer's behest.

- Meanwhile, Paul Adams discusses how Stephen Harper has become a leading figure for climate denialists around the globe (much to Canada's embarrassment):

More than anything, Abbott admires Harper because he sees him as a world leader in the fight against doing anything meaningful to contain global warming.

Like Harper, at one time Abbott was close to being an outright climate change denier. “The argument (behind climate change) is absolute crap,” he once remarked.

Nowadays, Abbott, like Harper, could best be described as a “skeptic”. He acknowledges that climate change is occurring but doubts the role that carbon emissions play in it. He got into a scrap with a UN climate change official and Australia’s own Climate Council over the possible link between climate change and his country’s unusually severe wildfires last October.

(Abbott took a page out of Harper’s book by abolishing the state-funded Climate Council, whose mission is to provide independent scientific information...)
...
Like Canada, whose economic dependence on dirty tar sands oil has grown under Harper, Australia has an emissions problem. In fact, Abbott seems bent on increasing the growth of his country’s coal industry, which is closely linked to China’s economic expansion.

That’s why Abbott is joining Harper in forming a cabal of nations trying to slow efforts to contain emissions. He is trying to repeal the carbon tax imposed by Gillard. And he has been an outspoken critic of President Obama’s recent climate-change initiative.

As chairman of the G-20 meeting slated for November in Brisbane, Abbott is resolute in keeping climate change off the agenda.

- Finally, Justin Ling reports on the Canadian military's extensive monitoring of Idle No More protestors. And CBC finds the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway to be rather less subtle in its efforts to shut down any discussion of rail safety - including by threatening elected officials with legal action if they say or do anything about crumbling rail lines.

New column day

Here, on how the City of Regina has taken a first step - but only that so far - in making sure that new development doesn't result in the perpetual subsidization of developers by current residents.

For further reading...
- Shawn Fraser's thoughtful post on the new interim phasing and financing plan is here. And the plan was approved (PDF) (with an amendment for a single project) earlier this week.
- The Calgary study on the time it takes for a neighbourhood to start providing net benefits to a city is discussed here.
- And for those with reading time to spare, the full report from Regina's administration can be found here (PDF). Among the points referenced in the column, I'll highlight two.

First, there's the limited scope of participation in the study:

The Administration engaged the Regina & Region Home Builders’ Association (RRHBA), developers, and major landowners of the 300K growth areas. Four in-person sessions were held and two opportunities for written feedback were provided.

This was then matched by the one-sided turnout at the Executive Committee meeting which considered the report:

The following addressed and answered questions of the Committee:
-        Stu Niebergall, representing the Regina and Region Home Builders Association;
-        Bob Linner and Pat Mah, representing  North Ridge Development Corporation;
-        John Nostrand, Rev. Jerven Weekes and Daryl Brown, representing Rosewood Park Alliance Church;
-        Paul Moroz, Ned Kosteniuk and Evan Hunchak, representing Dream Development;
-        Kevin Reese, representing The Creeks;
-        Blair Forster and Chad Jedlic, representing Harvard Developments; and
-        Lorne Yagelniski, representing Kensington Greens Corporation

Second, here's the contrast between the respective views of the administration and the participating developers on the issue of municipal debt:

[The] Administration concluded that the City cannot afford to continue to pay for growth-related capital projects in accordance with the current...policy...without phasing growth. The reason for this is there would be too many projects that require SAF funding that would not generate the required revenue to pay for the projects until years after the capital expenditure had been made. This would result in the need for the City to exceed its debt limit and taxpayers to take on significant risk. Furthermore, based on the current policy, the City, and thus taxpayers, would be required to generate considerably more tax revenue to pay for its share of the plan, approximately equivalent to a one-time 7 per cent mill rate increase.
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A number of Stakeholders reject debt limitations as a rationale for the need to phase development or increase SAF rates. Alternatives suggested include requesting an increase to the City’s debt limit or allocating more of the available debt to financing development.

Thursday Morning Links - #VoteOn Edition

This and that for your Thursday (and Ontario election day) reading...

- Joseph Heath makes the case against Tim Hudak's PCs in particular, and the shift from public to private goods in general:

(I)t’s fairly clear what the PCs are planning. They are proposing a general shift in Ontario away from consumption of public goods towards increased consumption of private goods. For example, they aren’t making any noises about privatizing things, shifting production out of the public sector into the private, but where the general profile of consumption would be the same. They are proposing that we actually produce and consume less of the sort of goods that are best produced by government: in particular, less primary education, less environment protection, less public transit, and no provincial pensions. This will be done in order to lower taxes, so that people will have more disposable income, to buy various private goods.

Now I guess it’s worth noting that the PCs have not even tried to make the case for this (nor has Coyne, really, although we did get into it a bit once). In other words, they haven’t said one thing about why they think that it would be good for us, as a society, to shift consumption away from public (or quasi-public, you know what I mean) toward private goods. And at first glance, I’m not sure what that case would be. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in middle-class suburban homes in Ontario, and when I look around there, I don’t usually say to myself “you know what these people really need?… more shit from Costco.”

So if you were to put it in the form of a debating club proposition: “be it resolved, that what the people of Ontario need is more private goods and fewer public goods” I would be more than happy to take the negative. In fact, when I hear people complaining about their various work-life/financial woes, I find that a large fraction of them can be traced back to a chronic undersupply of public goods.

...

(O)ne of the central characteristics of the public goods whose level of supply is being debated (primary education, reduced congestion, better air quality & other environmental goods) is that they are not subject to competitive consumption. As a result, increasing the supply of these goods stands poised to generate real, sustained increases in individual welfare. This is a point that has been made most persuasively by Robert Frank (in various place, including here, here and here). The pervasive tendency in our society will be to underestimate the severity of negative externalities (precisely because they are not priced) and to overestimate the value of market goods (because we ignore positional effects). This is sufficient to license a general presumption that, whatever the politically achievable level of government spending, it is probably too low, relative to the actual consumption preferences of citizens. Further reducing it will do absolutely nothing to solve the problems that people hope to solve with it, and is likely to produce nothing but unnecessary suffering.

So that is why a Conservative government would be bad for Ontario — because their basic plan, if implemented, would make life worse for pretty much everyone.

- And Linda McQuaig points out that Hudak's obviously-flawed math is far from the only problem with his party's plans to crush Ontario's wages and working conditions:

This folksy persona has tended to obscure two key things about Hudak that have become evident in the current campaign: He remains committed to anti-union legislation aimed at making Ontario more like Arkansas, and he’s capable of a breathtaking level of cynical dishonesty.

His claim that he will create one million jobs isn’t just based on faulty arithmetic — it’s based on nothing, really.

And yet, even after his numbers were exposed as grossly inflated (multiplied erroneously by eight), Hudak simply shrugged, trotted out platitudes (“economists never agree”) and refused to acknowledge the fraudulent nature of his jobs claim.

Hudak is extremely anti-union. He used to be up-front about this, openly advocating that Ontario adopt so-called ‘right to work’ legislation — laws found primarily in the U.S. south which are aimed at curbing unions.

By preventing companies and unions from signing contracts with an automatic dues check-off, such laws make it difficult for unions to survive, leaving workers with little clout to push wages much above the U.S. federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. (In Arkansas, the state allows a lower minimum wage of $6.25 an hour.)
...
It is this preposterous decision to multiple by eight which has captured most attention and caused Hudak to be ridiculed about his math.
But the whole package is riddled with ludicrous assumptions based on Zycher’s (and presumably Hudak’s) belief that by increasing “economic freedom” to the level of Arkansas and Mississippi, Ontario’s GDP per capita will grow — even though our GDP per capita is already higher than these economically “freer” states and Hudak has said he won’t introduce the anti-union laws that allegedly increase “economic freedom” anyway.

- David Reevely looks behind the surface of a "decline your vote" astroturf site, and predictably finds a right-winger trying to convince marginal voters they shouldn't bother with democracy. And Alison makes clear that it's the politicians least interested in serving the public - Hudak's PCs - who would benefit if citizens give up in the ridings targeted for voter demobilization.

- Which is naturally just fine with some of our corporate media overlords, as Jesse Brown offers an inside scoop on the owner-mandated orders to override the Globe and Mail's editorial board to hand Tim Hudak an endorsement - followed by a sad attempt to claim the endorsement actually reflected editorial judgment rather than orders from on high. But of course the real controversy is that a union representing media workers had the nerve to express its own opinion.

- In what's surely unrelated news, Canada's corporate class is corrupt even by its own account. 

- Finally, Johannes Wheeldon sets out the options available to Ontario's political parties after today's election - with a particular focus on the (seemingly likely) event that no party holds a majority. Bill Tieleman observes that strategic voting tends to benefit precisely the party one wants to stop. And for those looking for more reading material on the Ontario election, Ron Waller's blog is a great place to start - particularly in reminding us just which party actually offers an alternative to Hudak's corporatism.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Exploratory cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Richard Shillington studies the Cons' income-splitting scheme for the Broadbent Institute, and finds that it's even more biased toward the wealthy than previously advertised:

• The average benefit of income splitting across all households is only $185, though nine out of 10 households will receive nothing. When one factors in the $3 billion cost in lost federal revenues that will result from this tax policy, income splitting stands to impose net costs on many Canadian households.

• To gain from income splitting, a family with children under 18 must have two parents in different tax brackets to share income. Thus single parent families (20.2%) and those with partners in the same tax bracket (28.9%) are automatically excluded from benefitting. The detailed calculations accounting for available refundable and non-refundable tax credits estimate that 54.1% of families would see no benefit.
...
Where significant benefits do accrue, they are to higher-income families, particularly those in a traditional model. This policy, which benefits a higher proportion of families in some provinces than others, stands to increase income inequality in Canada.

Which leads in turn to Rick Smith's observation:

"If the government set out to specifically design a policy to make inequality worse, this would be it," Smith said.

"This policy is an inequality generating machine."

- But then, the Cons would hardly be alone in pursuing increased inequality as a policy goal, as Toby Sanger highlights the Hudak PCs' proposed handouts to millionaires at the expense of the general public:

The biggest beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts would be the most profitable of Ontario’s large corporations and, in particular, banks, insurance and other financial service companies. Almost 40 per cent of the tax benefit would go to Ontario’s finance, insurance, and real estate sector, which only employs one out of 13 Ontario workers. This industry would get a tax break estimated at $957 million a year, rising above $1 billion by 2019 and totaling $7.6 billion over eight years.

The other top four industry sectors that would gain the most are trade, with about $3 billion over eight years, manufacturing with an estimated $2.4 billion, and professional services with an estimated $2.2 billion. Almost 80 per cent would go to these four industry sectors: a total of over $15 billion over eight years.

Ontario and federal corporate income and capital tax cuts over the past decade have already reduced the taxes paid by these four sectors by about $7 billion annually. And how much has total employment increased in these four sectors in return for these massive corporate tax cuts over the past decade? A grand total of minus 8,000 jobs – and that’s during a decade when total employment of other sectors in Ontario increased by over 650,000.

If $7 billion in annual tax cuts provided by the McGuinty, Harper and Martin governments didn’t lead to any job growth, it’s hard to believe that Hudak’s additional corporate tax cuts of almost $2 billion a year will do any better.

- And Hudak is being particularly obvious about his distaste for those worse off by refusing to even discuss the idea of reducing poverty - even after his party was shamed into supporting anti-poverty legislation not long ago.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne looks at the prospect of another false majority in Ontario's election, and questions why Canadians still put up with first-past-the-post politics which can cause wild swings in governance based on small numbers of voters.

- Finally, Adam Riggio discusses the effect of creeping privatization and corporate funding on Canadian universities.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Buttonwood weighs in on the disproportionate influence of the ultra-rich when it comes to making policy choices which affect all of us:

But the analysis backs up earlier work by Larry Bartels of Princeton, author of a book called “Unequal Democracy”, and the general thesis of the late political scientist, Mancur Olson, that government can be in hock to special interests. This may be truer in America than elsewhere since its campaign-finance laws are so liberal: $6 billion was spent on the 2012 elections. This system forces candidates to spend much of their time raising money from the wealthy and from business. Even if no direct quid pro quos are involved, candidates may simply absorb the views of the better-off by osmosis.

The danger is of a vicious cycle in which politicians adopt policies that favour the better-off; this gives the wealthy more money with which to lobby politicians, which leads to more favourable legislation and so on. The surge in inequality over the last 30 years could perhaps be attributed, in part, to this process.

(Though of course I'd dissent from the column's conclusion that the most important problem with a concentration of wealth and power at the top is that it might cause people to start questioning their betters.)

- Joe Fantauzzi discusses how austerity has been used to attack social connections in Ontario and elsewhere. Kev reminds us of the disconnect between continued (though not enhanced) productivity gains and stagnating wages since the neoliberal revolution took hold. And Russell Jacoby contrasts Thomas Piketty's call for somewhat improved equality against Karl Marx's focus on a struggle over ownership:

(E)galitarianism as an idea and demand also contains an element of resignation; it accepts society, but wants to balance out the goods or privileges. Gays want equality, the right like everyone else to marry. Fine, but marriage is still marriage, the imperfect institution that society cannot give up or improve upon. R.H. Tawney, the British leftist historian, noted the limits of equality in his 1931 book Equality, a broad defense of egalitarianism. The working class movement, he writes, puts its faith in “the possibility of a society,” where a higher value is placed on people and a lower value on money. But that movement is liable to fall short. “When it does so, what it is apt to desire is not a social order of a different kind, in which money and economic power will no longer be the criterion of achievement, but a social order of the same kind, in which money and economic power will be somewhat differently distributed.” This straightforward sentence cuts to the heart of the matter. Equalizing pollution pollutes equally, but does not end pollution.
...
Piketty anchors inequality in what he calls “the central contradiction of capitalism,” the disjuncture between the rate of return on capital and the rate of economic growth. Inasmuch as the former inevitably eclipses the latter, favoring existing wealth over existing labor, it leads to a “terrifying” unequal wealth distribution. Marx might not disagree, but again his focus is on work, which is where inequality originates and plays out. Marx argues that the accumulation of capital leads to partial, casual and permanent unemployment. It would be difficult to declare that these are not pressing realities in the world today, but they do not surface in Piketty.

Of course, Marx begins with a different proposition: labor as the source of wealth. Again, today this might seem quaint, but also signals something about capitalism that hardly is resolved. Capitalism both requires and dispenses with labor. In other words, capitalism both hires and, increasingly, unhires. It needs workers as it expands, but sheds workers as it cuts costs and automates, reducing its work force. Marx discusses at length how an advancing capitalism produces “a relatively redundant working population.” This takes two basic forms, releasing workers already hired and ceasing to add new workers. As a consequence capitalism produces “disposable” people or a reserve army of unemployed. As wealth and capital advance, so do the underemployed and unemployed, the truly unequal.

- Meanwhile, Brad Hornick examines the link between the resource economy and class politics in British Columbia:

It is not "the people" that are at the forefront of championing this fossil fuel economy against any alternatives. It is the corporate CEOs, the shareholders, the investment bankers, the marketing companies, the corporate lawyers, the conservative pundits that lock us in to this particular future against any substantive alternative.

That is why we can say that we are not in this together, that this great problem we are now facing is not "anthropogenic" climate change. All humans do not all equally contribute to the problem of climate change. Nor do we all equally invest in the system that leads to climate crisis. The crisis we presently face is "capitalist" climate change, driven by those who champion a certain kind of economy that serves the interests of a certain group of people.
...
Fossil fuel capitalism operates within neo-liberal economics and politics where even the pretense of social solidarity and justice has been increasingly abandoned. But the climate crisis is opening up political and ideological space to discuss the entire system we live in (that is, the centrality of capitalism). There are signs that both economic crisis and ecological destruction are de-legitimizing political systems and helping people to question capitalist ideologies that ignore the social and ecological costs of fossil fuels.

It is because this system excludes populations from both economic activity and political participation that new antagonisms and struggles are developing. One only needs to observe among many other examples the plebiscite in Kitimat, the growing challenges to Kinder Morgan in Burnaby, or the intervention by the UN special rapporteur, James Anaya, over the concerns of proposed projects in First Nation territories.

There are political and activist forces coalescing today within British Columbia to challenge not just fossil fuel interests, but also the systemic forces that drive large capital. They are challenging fossil fuel capitalism at the point of production and extraction, and attempting to network allies amongst the traditional environmental forces.

- Ron Waller takes a look at the unrepresentative nature of first-past-the-post politics - but also rightly cautions Ontario voters against falling for "strategic voting" scams.

- Finally, Sean Holman offers a reminder that Daniel Therrien isn't the first federal Privacy Commissioner to represent a controversial appointment - though the Cons, like the Libs before them, have chosen not to make the selection process more palatable. And Robyn Benson argues that we have no reason at all to trust the Cons when it comes to our privacy.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Reich proposes that the best way to address corporate criminality is to make sure that those responsible go to jail - rather than simply being able to pay a fine out of corporate coffers and pretend nothing ever happened.

- And Shawn Fraser suggests that Regina developers should pick up the tab for the costs they impose on the city - even as the city itself has opportunities to both better shape residential growth, and turn a profit through its own own development corporation.

- Meanwhile, the CP reports on the clash between biased markets and free speech - as Greenpeace was rejected in its effort to purchase billboard space from the same business which didn't hesitate a second to provide a platform for climate change denialists.

- Andrew Coyne writes that Stephen Harper is racking up scandals and abuses of power at an unprecedented pace. But Chantal Hebert notes that none of the Cons' manipulations can help them avoid responsibility for governing - including by deciding between serving their oil-industry masters and listening to the public about the Northern Gateway pipeline.

- Susan Delacourt takes note that political parties are increasingly looking to brand themselves through means that have nothing to do with politics - while identifying what that says about their seeming mandate to discuss policy choices:

When a political ad arrives through the mail, does the average citizen pore over its contents to determine who paid for it? Again, probably not. A marketing-research fact sheet distributed by Canada Post a few years ago said that the response rate for all direct-mail advertising — not just political ads — was a scant 2.18 per cent. Political parties, in short, might be better off mailing those pamphlets directly to the local recycling stations.

The trick these days, it seems, is to make political advertising look like something slightly more useful: a World Cup schedule, for instance, or the front page of a newspaper.
...
Advertisers, private or political, are always going to try to slip their sales messages into products that are useful to consumers or citizens: pens, T-shirts, newspapers, World Cup schedules. 
...
A harder question, though, is why political advertising is held in such low esteem that it now has to masquerade as something more relevant to Canadians. Educating the public doesn’t have to be a mission that’s gone entirely out of fashion.

- Finally, Vaughn Palmer reviews the B.C. Libs' consistent pattern of bad faith in dealing with teachers.