Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- David Crane identifies the good news in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on climate change - which is that we can meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets through readily feasible policy choices as long as our federal government cares enough to make them. And Steven Staples points out that it's entirely possible pair efforts to fight climate change with good jobs, though we can't take the latter for granted:

(A) green job revolution will not happen by itself, no matter how well meaning the intentions.

The York University project, Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change, recently noted an alarming gap in the government climate strategies between rhetoric and reality. A report for the project by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that while provincial governments frequently speak of “jobs and opportunities,” there are few tangible policies and programs in Canada to support job creation and professional development in the context of a green energy transition. Instead, most governments see the creation of green jobs as a consequence of transitioning to a cleaner economy rather than a policy target in and of itself.

It’s becoming apparent that workers need to get involved to ensure that government policies include job creation as a central tenet of Canada’s climate change strategies.
...
Now—with oil prices low, a new Paris agreement on emissions reductions, and a persistent employment problem—is exactly the right time for the government, employers and unions to achieve a just transition that brings about a green economy built on fairness and co-operation.

- Janine Jackson interviews Brendon DeMelle about Exxon's decades-long global warming denialism. And John Geddes rightly criticizes Justin Trudeau's attempt to edit climate change out of the causes of extreme weather events.

- Meanwhile, Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade examine the wave of bankruptcies hitting the U.S. oil industry - signalling that the reality of radical change based on lower global prices is hitting far beyond Canada's producers. 

- Dan Roberts reports on the Obama administration's move to crack down on some forms of international tax evasion.

- PressProgress calls out the Fraser Institute's attempt to gloss over the lack of support for child care by counting upper-class giveaways aimed at future post-secondary education (among other things) as child care funding.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne offers an explanation of the Libs' incoherent changes to the Senate. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jim Dwyer writes about the cumulative effect a childhood in poverty has on individual development. And Lee Elliot Major calls out the self-perpetuating exclusion set up by the wealthy to preserve their privilege:

A survey found that the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ now helps to finance 25% of all UK mortgage transactions as parents give their children a leg-up onto the property ladder. In many parts of London buying a property is now out of bounds for all but the wealthiest offspring. Exclusive enclaves for the next generation of elites are being created – within walking distance to the nation’s most influential best-paid jobs in the capital.

These trends echo a similar seemingly unstoppable pattern witnessed across the Atlantic. The New York Times reported that the top 20 per cent of the income distribution in the United States is separating itself from the rest of the population — by geography and by income, as well as by education. Citing a raft of recent academic studies, the author argued that ”this self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.”

- In keeping with that trend, Eric Morath discusses how the gig economy is exacerbating inequality by producing more returns for the people who already have the most. And Patrick Caldwell points out how Kansas' extreme giveaways to the rich have failed on every conceivable front.

- Michael Babad examines how much more difficult it is even for younger workers with steady employment to buy a home due to prices far outpacing incomes.

- Toba Bryant studies the policy options and processes which can be pursued in working to ameliorate income inequality. 

- Finally, Carter Vance asks when we can expect to see the Libs take any of their promised steps to fix even the worst parts of C-51 - and the answer looks to be no time soon.

New column day

Here, contrasting Brad Wall's giveaway of public money to subsidize take-out meals against his choice to make healthy food less accessible to the people who need it most in Saskatoon's inner city.

For further reading...
- The Star-Phoenix reported on the history of Station 20 West, as well as the public backlash against the Saskatchewan Party's choice to pull provincial funding from the project and the eventual closure of the Good Food Junction.
- Meanwhile, Rachel Engler-Stringer studied the effect of the store while it lasted:

(O)f residents in the neighbourhoods surrounding the Good Food Junction, over a third have household incomes of less than $20,000, and more than half are less than $30,000. With household incomes this low, and given what we know about the cost of housing in Saskatoon, it’s likely that a large proportion of households in Saskatoon’s core neighbourhoods are buying minimal if any food, let alone at the Good Food Junction.

We also studied sales data at the Good Food Junction over a one-year period. We found that a large proportion of sales were for less than $10, which is not enough to support even a not-for-profit store. Small purchases are consistent with low incomes and people having very little money with which to buy food.

Our analysis also showed those living near the Good Food Junction spent more on vegetables and less on meat and prepared foods than people living further away. This tells us the store was being used for the importantly nutritious foods they couldn’t buy anywhere else,  and not just to buy the same foods available in neighbourhood convenience stores.

We also followed about 150 regular Good Food Junction shoppers for a year and asked them questions about their health, how they access food, and their household characteristics. We found 1 in 3 were ‘moderately food insecure’, compromising on the quality and quantity of food they were eating due to not having enough money. More than 1 in 5 were ‘severely food insecure’, eating less food regularly and sometimes skipping eating for whole days. This means that over half of the shoppers we studied were struggling with some form of food insecurity, much higher than the Canadian average of 8%.

Researching door-to-door we also asked them if they used community food resources. This includes charities like the Saskatoon Food Bank and Learning Centre, Good Food Boxes and community gardens organized by CHEP, and many others. Almost 3 in 4 households used at least one of these community food resources, with some using up to 4 of them. More than 40% of households reported using charitable food sources such as food bank hampers and meal programs, another figure far higher than the national average of 3%.

All of this data put together tell us one of the main reasons for the Good Food Junction closing, is that many people in the neighbourhood are just too poor to shop there (or anywhere else). They are instead  having to resort to charity to feed themselves and their families. That should not be acceptable anywhere, let alone in a rich country such as ours.

- Finally, Kevin O'Connor reported on the new subsidy to Skip the Dishes. And Murray Mandryk is one of many highlighting the Saskatchewan Party's picking of winners and losers - but not so much the priorities it sees as important in the first place.

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.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Yard cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tom Parkin writes about the growing divide between the lucky few who are siphoning wealth out of Canada, and the mass of people facing a precarious economic future.

- PressProgress highlights much the same distinction by examining the types of workers who make less in a year than Christy Clark's donor-funded car allowance. Andrew MacLeod reports on the connection between the B.C. Libs' donations and real estate developers. And Derrick O'Keefe points out that Clark (and her corporate-funded peers) are counting on the public not paying attention to who's pulling the strings.

- Roderick Benns talks to Daniel Blaikie about the prospect of a basic income. And Murray Mandryk takes a look a Saskatchewan's budget which shows relatively large amounts of money toward education, social services and policing producing lamentable results.

- Mike De Souza exposes Enbridge's direct role in dictating what the National Energy Board reported about its pipeline safety failings. 

- Finally, Alex Boutilier reports on the Communications Security Establishment's attempts to avoid providing an honest account of its breaches of privacy. And Jim Bronskill and Dean Beeby offer some useful suggestions to modernize Canada's access to information laws.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Ben Schiller talks to Joseph Stiglitz about the link between technology and inequality - and particularly the lack of current incentives to work on improving standards of living rather than capturing windfalls. And Don Pittis suggests that we should focus on building up new ideas, rather than constantly caving to the demands of corporate behemoths.

- Chris Buckley points out how Ontario's labour laws are falling far short of meeting the needs of vulnerable workers.

- Meanwhile, Charlotte Helston responds to the spin that it's somehow easy for a homeless person to "just get a job". And Andrea Hill reports on the human cost of homelessness in La Ronge - with a community of 3,000 people seeing multiple deaths every year due to a lack of support services.

- Derek Leahy discusses Marc Jaccard's view that regulation, not pricing, is the most important element of an effective plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the oil industry is doing everything in its power to avoid a meaningful discussion of its role in overheating our planet - including threatening Canadian universities, and flooding the airwaves with advertising which far exceeds climate change coverage.

- Finally, Robert Shiller discusses the importance of public attitudes and stories in shaping economic outcomes. But it's worth noting that Shiller's point should lead us to seek to avoid veering off toward either irrational exuberance or excessive pessimism - not to try to operate in denial of the real weaknesses which have led to previous recessions.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Frank comments on the connection between recognizing the luck and social support which lead to one's own success, and being willing to fund a state which will ensure opportunities for everybody:

I've seen even brief discussions of the link between success and luck temper the outrage many wealthy people feel about taxes. At an intuitive level, it's not puzzling that successful citizens like Schwarzman might view mandatory taxation as unjustified confiscation of what's rightfully theirs. But extensive public investment was an essential precondition for the economic prosperity of those very same tax protesters, and we can't have public investment without taxes.

Sensible views about taxes or any other subject do not reliably triumph over less sensible ones in the short run. But we should all take comfort in the fact that the long-run historical narrative bends toward truth. One reason is that when evidence for a particular view becomes compelling, the number of people who embrace it tends to snowball. Beliefs are contagious.

Public opinion shifts one conversation at a time. In my own recent conversations with highly successful people, I've seen opinions change on the spot. Many who seem never to have considered the possibility that their success stemmed from factors other than their own talent and effort are often surprisingly willing to rethink. In many instances, even brief reflection stimulates them to recall specific examples of good breaks they've enjoyed along the way.

So I hope you'll talk with your friends about their experiences with luck. In the process, you may persuade them to support a more ambitious program of public investment. But even if not, you'll almost surely hear some interesting stories.

- Meanwhile, Dean Beeby writes about RESP grants as just one example of how programs labelled as helping people in need actually benefit higher-income families. But on the bright side, Bryan Mullan reports that a small investment by the Canada Revenue Agency in investigating tax evasion produced three times the expected return in public revenue.

- Karthik Ramanna and Allan Dreschel discuss the corporate war against accountability. And Chris Sagers points out that antitrust law represents a readily-available - but seldom-used - option to address the growth of unrestrained corporate power.

- David Dayen rightly asks what social purpose hedge funds serve - and suggests that it's time both to redirect public assets which currently prop them up, and to stop giving them special regulatory treatment. 

- Finally, Andrew Jackson highlights the Parliamentary Budget Officer's attempts to wring information out of a Lib government whose first inclination was to be even more secretive than its predecessor - and finds that the information eventually produced shows stagnation or cuts in social investments. And CBC offers a reminder of the potential of open government.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Martin Lukacs highlights the Canadian public's broad support for the Leap Manifesto - and the opportunity available to any party willing to put its contents into practice. And Shawn Katz is hopeful that the NDP will seize the opening. But Bill Tieleman points out that the best intentions won't get anywhere if they're not translated into electoral and political progress.

- Lana Payne discusses what we should expect from a government in an economic downturn - with one of the key needs being some reason for hope to develop something more, rather than scolding about how we'll have to make do with less indefinitely.

- Scott Aquanno and Jordan Brennan point out the inherent tension in setting target inflation rates, while rightly reopening the question of whether we should put the interests of capital ahead of those of wage-earners. And Eric Morath notes that wage growth is the missing piece of a U.S. economic recovery.

- Meanwhile, David Dayen weighs in on the growing body of evidence that the arguments against a more reasonable minimum wage have no basis in reality.

- Finally, Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach offer a broad outline of a policy agenda to reduce poverty and improve opportunities across the income spectrum.

Musical interlude

Radical Face - Welcome Home

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Michael Klare writes about the future direction of the oil industry - which looks to involve cashing out quickly than building anything lasting:

At the beginning of this century, many energy analysts were convinced that we were at the edge of the arrival of “peak oil”; a peak, that is, in the output of petroleum in which planetary reserves would be exhausted long before the demand for oil disappeared, triggering a global economic crisis. As a result of advances in drilling technology, however, the supply of oil has continued to grow, while demand has unexpectedly begun to stall.  This can be traced both to slowing economic growth globally and to an accelerating “green revolution” in which the planet will be transitioning to non-carbon fuel sources. With most nations now committed to measures aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases under the just-signed Paris climate accord, the demand for oil is likely to experience significant declines in the years ahead. In other words, global oil demand will peak long before supplies begin to run low, creating a monumental challenge for the oil-producing countries.

This is no theoretical construct.  It’s reality itself.  Net consumption of oil in the advanced industrialized nations has already dropped from 50 million barrels per day in 2005 to 45 million barrels in 2014. Further declines are in store as strict fuel efficiency standards for the production of new vehicles and other climate-related measures take effect, the price of solar and wind power continues to fall, and other alternative energy sources come on line. While the demand for oil does continue to rise in the developing world, even there it’s not climbing at rates previously taken for granted. With such countries also beginning to impose tougher constraints on carbon emissions, global consumption is expected to reach a peak and begin an inexorable decline.According to experts Thijs Van de Graaf and Aviel Verbruggen, overall world peak demand could be reached as early as 2020.

In such a world, high-cost oil producers will be driven out of the market and the advantage — such as it is — will lie with the lowest-cost ones. Countries that depend on petroleum exports for a large share of their revenues will come under increasing pressure to move away from excessive reliance on oil.

- Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin discusses how the Libs are helping Saudi Arabia to continue and expand its human rights abuses. The CP notes that they're also following in the Cons' footsteps in limiting workers' ability to refuse unsafe work. And Alison calls attention to the farce that is the Libs' excuse for public consultation on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- Patrick Cain reports on the plummeting number of tax evasion prosecutions in Canada. (And it's worth noting that the starting point hardly represented an obvious deterrent to begin with.)

- Brian Hutchinson points out the odour of corruption emanating from Christy Clark's donor-funded income. And Sarah Mills highlights Brad Wall's similar payments for service.

- Finally, David Walters offers a look at the options and choices facing families at several points on the income spectrum - though it's worth pointing out that the people included in article skew far higher than the U.S.' actual income distribution.

New column day

Here, on the Conference Board of Canada's environmental report card - and the conclusions we should draw from both Saskatchewan's last-place finish, and the typically appalling response from the Wall government.

For further reading...
- Brendan Haley discusses the steps needed to reach a cleaner and more equitable economy - featuring a focus on transitioning how workers are able to use their existing skills and training rather than propping up dirty resource industries.
- Mike de Souza reports that the minimally-discussed Line 3 pipeline expansion has received NEB approval to expand export capacity to the U.S. And Justin Ling writes that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has concluded Canada is almost certain to miss every greenhouse gas emission target we've set - meaning that Canada's D grade in the Conference Board's report card isn't much to write home about.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Allan Woods looks into the pitiful responses to states of emergency declared by First Nations, as well as a decade and a half worth of neglect of cries for help from Pikangikum First Nation in particular. Kristy Kirkup reports on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's latest order requiring the federal government to stop dragging its heels in providing social services. And Kate Heartfield rightly argues that we need to treat Third World conditions on First Nations as matters of injustice which require correction - not merely a basis for charity.

- Meanwhile, Richard Wolff discusses the U.S.' example of racial disparity as an example of how discrimination and capitalism can feed off of each other.

- Heather Mallick looks at the development of pay-for-plasma schemes as the latest example of the commoditization of anything that can be exploited.

- Marco Chown Oved reports on the missing $40 billion which have been diverted offshore from Canada in the last year.

- Gary Mason reports that Christy Clark's big-money fund-raisers are translating directly into increased income for her due to a party top-up beyond her salary as premier, then rightly questions the ethics involved in that income stream.

- Finally, Donald Savoie summarizes what Canadians governments are doing well in their current form (which is unfortunately mostly limited to managing communications), and what they could do better by paying attention to the public services they're supposed to be delivering. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Fred Dews highlights Alice Rivkin's suggestions as to consensus policies which can reduce inequality while facilitating economic development. And Sheila Regehr looks at how a basic income can work in practice, while Monica Oss reminds us that investments in reducing poverty and inequality can often be recouped in reduced health care costs alone.

- But Sean McElwee echoes Bernie Sanders' point that we're far less likely to see policy choices which reflect our common interest when we don't have sufficient voter turnout to demand them:

(P)olitical scientist Anthony Fowler notes that when compulsory voting was implemented in Australia, the increased voter turnout by 24 percentage points and the result was increased vote and seat shares for the Labor Party of 7 to 10 percent. Fowler used several methods to examine what the impact of universal turnout might be in the United States. One method used is to compare on-cycle gubernatorial elections (ones that coincide with a federal election) with off-cycle elections. He finds a stunning result: On-cycle gubernatorial elections increase turnout by 17 points, and Democratic vote share by 6 points, enough to shift many elections.

Voter turnout would also influence policy. In a new study at the state level, political scientists Christopher Witko, Nathan Kelly and William Franko confirm this analysis. They find that states with higher levels of class bias in turnout have higher levels of economic inequality because high levels of class bias limits the power of progressive policymakers and reduces the liberalism of economic policymaking. This relationship was also discovered in a recent paper by James Avery, who finds, “states with greater income bias in turnout have higher levels of income inequality.”

In an early study on the influence of class in turnout, Kim Hill and Jan Leighley find that higher turnout among the poor (and thus lower class bias) leads to higher spending on welfare programs. Economists Timothy Besley and Anne Case find that,

“Less costly voter registration— through motor-voter rules, or through day-of-polling registration—is generally associated with higher taxes, higher spending, and larger family assistance and workers’ compensation payments.”

- Mike de Souza reports on Imperial Oil's longtime knowledge that the oil industry has been engaged in anti-social environmental destruction. And Arthur Neslen exposes Chevron's express intent to use new trade agreements to try to prevent governments from developing new policies including fracking regulations.

- Finally, Larry Brown discusses how the Trans-Pacific Partnership fits into the business lobby's desire to take power out of the hands of people and the governments we elect. Paul Dewar points out the need to crack down on child labour and other other international abuses, rather than entrenching them as part of a corporate-driven system. And PressProgress points out Statistics Canada's latest estimates showing that corporate Canada has hidden $270 billion in offshore tax havens.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Social cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Harry Leslie Smith writes about how an increasingly polarized city such as London excludes a large number of its citizens from meaningful social participation:

(A)usterity has diminished the opportunity of the young and shortened the lives of the old. Even libraries – the life blood of any community – have been savagely cut in many London boroughs leaving senior citizens with one less free space to gather, learn and socialise. London may be a great city to live in if you are an elderly member of the elite. But for everyone else it is a trap where upon retirement you must sell your home, if you are lucky enough to own, and move on to greener pastures – or if you are a renter with few options and many connections to this city, you must remain like the poor of yesteryear, watching a pension that might do you well in Halifax only stretched to the third week of the month.
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London may become a city shorn of any diversity because extreme wealth will drive all those out but the rich and those who serve them. It would be a great tragedy if London lost its elderly not through the natural passage of time but through the brute ugliness of a one-sided economy. We have to remember that London without old people isn’t a city, it’s just a factory floor, a place where you work and shop, with no history, no past or future, just an endless present tense in pursuit of money.

- Meanwhile, the Economist discusses how austerity inevitably imposes far greater burdens on the poor than on the wealthy. And Truthout notes that those additional stressors lead to a measurable increase in suicides - meaning that lives are on the line when governments choose to stop doing their job of protecting the public.

- Eman Bare writes about the impact of ballooning student debt in delaying young workers' independence.

- Charlie Smith reports on the CCPA's study (PDF) showing the health and service risks of corporate medicine. And Lizanne Foster sets out the typical plan to turn public education into a profit centre at the expense of students and the public.

- Finally, Michal Rozworski and Louis-Phillipe Rochon offer some cautionary notes about a basic income as a solution to inequality. And Andrew Flowers surveys what we know - and don't know - from past and developing trials of the idea.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Tyler Hamilton offers a roundup of the growing threat of climate change - and Canada's shameful contribution to making it worse.

- Andy Blatchford reports on the Libs' plans for a massive selloff of federal public assets in order to paper over holes in their budgets. And Tammy Robert examines how the corporatization of school construction (under orders from the provincial government) is imposing massive costs on Saskatchewan municipalities.

- Meanwhile, E. Wayne Ross comments on the unfairness involved in funding private schools through public funds. And Doug Saunders takes a look at Finland's success in building an education system to reduce inequality rather than exacerbate it.

- Adele Peters reports that contrary to the threats of business opponents, Seattle's increased minimum wage hasn't had any meaningful effect on affordability. And Nick Hanauer and Robert Reich point out that improved access to overtime pay would work wonders both to reduce the stress on current workers, and provide jobs for people lacking them.

- Finally, PressProgress points out what the Mike Duffy verdict tells us about the culture of the Conservative Party. And Tom Parkin notes that the main difference with the Trudeau Libs is their misdirection to shift attention from a similar track record.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Branko Milanovic discusses how our current means of measuring inequality may leave out the most important part of the story in the form of wealth deliberately hidden from public view:

(T)here are at least two problems. First, the rich especially, but everybody else as well, have a clear interest in minimizing their incomes to reduce taxes they pay. Second, the rich engage, as we have seen in the Panama Papers, in massive schemes to hide their assets and income. Thus, despite our best efforts to uncover the full extent of top incomes we are only at the beginning of a long road.

So it is perhaps the right time to think how fiscal data should be improved, how fiscal and household survey should be made more compatible, and most ambitiously, whether better administrative data (like the world register of wealth proposed by Piketty and Zucman) should be created, both to tax wealth and to combat fiscal evasion. We are already moving to the next stage of methodological development where the concern with incomes of the rich, partly because they have become so much richer than the others, partly because they wield huge political power, and partly because they are hiding their assets, may take center stage.

- Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood notes that even free-trade cheerleaders such as the C.D. Howe Institute can't spin the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a light that would result in any meaningful economic benefits to offset democratic losses.

- Liam Richards reports on the Conference Board of Canada's finding that Saskatchewan is the worst jurisdiction in the developed world when it comes to environmental policy.

- Evgeny Morozov examines how major tech firms are well on their way to taking monopoly control over the data underlying most of private lives. [Update: See also Ian Welsh on the effects of the latest and most pervasive technological changes.]

- Finally, Alison reviews what a week of "real change" looks like for the Trudeau Libs, while Aaron Wherry notes that omnibus budget bills are just one more carryover from the Harper Cons. And John Manley's shilling for the sale of arms to human rights violators offers a reminder of the Libs' general priorities.

[Edit: fixed link as per comment.]

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Ed Broadbent, Michal Hay and Emilie Nicolas theorize that Canada's left is on the rise. Matt Karp takes a look at the policy preferences of younger American voters, including a strong willingness to fund far better social programs than are currently available. And N+1 responds to the rise of Bernie Sanders and his progressive movement by offering its take on what a left-wing foreign policy might look like in the years to come.

- Eugene King points out the shaky reasoning behind any claim that new pipelines will meaningfully affect either the price or viability of Canadian oil. Adrian Morrow reports that Ontario looks to be a prime example as to how we're already far short of meeting any reasonable greenhouse gas emissions target - meaning that more action to increase emissions is entirely counterproductive. And Marc Lee makes the same point by comparing the effects of new pipelines to Canada's Paris climate change commitments:

(A)nnual lifecycle emissions for each of the pipelines would be greater than all of BC’s annual GHG emissions, and are equivalent to a sizeable share of Canada’s emissions (11% in the case of Enbridge; 13% in the case of Kinder-Morgan; and 24% in the case of Energy East).

This highlights a major flaw in the Paris Agreement, bold as it is. That Agreement is based on countries committing to reduce the carbon emissions within their borders, but not the carbon extracted and exported for someone else to burn. We need a different type of international framework to constrain global supplies of fossil fuels: to divvy up shares of a carbon budget for use in transition, then leaving the rest in the ground, forever.

- Anna Mehler Paperny discusses the challenge facing lower-income Canadians in trying to find housing. And Joshua Tapper highlights the relationship between poverty and poor health, while arguing there's plenty we can do to make sure that a lack of money doesn't translate into sickness.

- Geoff Leo reports on the latest damage being done to Saskatchewan communities by the Wall government's P3 obsession, as Regina is looking at having to take over an underfunded school construction project without the province bearing any of the cost of the structure it imposed.

- Finally, David Miranda writes that the corporate-driven impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil has everything to do with facilitating corruption rather than fighting it.

Musical interlude

Tritonal & Paris Blohm feat. Sterling Fox - Colors

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- The BBC reports that even UK business groups are acknowledging that excessive executive pay is leading to public concern and distrust in the state of the economy. And Alex Hern notes that Steve Wozniak for one isn't shy to point out the need for Apple and other corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.

- Meanwhile, David Morley rightly argues that it's long past time for Canada to better take care of its own children:

(T)he truth is too many of our children are unhappy and unhealthy. They don’t have a fair shot in life.

In fact, we have one of the highest proportions of children who report very low life satisfaction. That’s because nearly one quarter of Canadian children report having poor health symptoms on a daily basis. The same amount of older youth have diagnosable mental health problems. Levels of obesity have not changed. Child poverty remains high. Most areas that were assessed showed little or no improvement over the last decade.
...
Disadvantages start early in life – and they tend to accumulate. By investing more, and earlier on, to make sure children get a good start in life, we’ll be ensuring they finish childhood ready to make a strong entrance into adulthood. We’ll be equipping them with the confidence and skills they need to become happy and productive members of their communities. We’ll reduce the need to respond to the negative consequences of an unequal society. And, we’ll have more resources to spend on positive development opportunities for all. 

- Jorge Barrera reminds us of the history of abuse, neglect and cover-ups which led to the suicide crisis at Attawapiskat (and elsewhere). And Sean Fine and Gloria Galloway report that one of the Libs' first actions upon taking power was to let the Catholic Church out of its obligations to fund healing programs which had been part of a residential school settlement. 

- Andrew Coyne highlights how Justin Trudeau's supposedly fresh government is aging in a hurry, while Neil MacDonald is already tired of the chasm between the Libs' promises and their choices. And Jonathan Manthorpe examines how blatantly the Libs are distorting reality in order to excuse arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

- Finally, Monia Mazigh points out that the Libs have also continued the Cons' appalling double standard in treating privacy only as an excuse to avoid releasing information which would generally help individuals whose rights are being abused.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Owen Jones argues that public policy and social activism are needed to rein in the excesses of a corporate class which sees it as its job to extract every possible dollar from the society around it:

A financial elite plunged the country into calamity and effectively got away with it unscathed, while workers suffered the longest period of reduced pay since the Victorian era. Meanwhile public services, social security and secure jobs were slashed. It has become increasingly clear – as the Panama Papers underscored – that a significant chunk of our economic elite simply do not like paying tax in this country.

The problem is that this injustice is met with resignation, rather than anger. While rage at the smaller misdemeanours of the poor – such as benefit fraud – seems easy to stir, destructive behaviour on this far greater scale is discussed like the weather. The rich pay themselves ludicrous sums of money, major corporations avoid tax, sometimes it rains. It’s this resignation – stemming from a lack of faith in any viable alternative – that feeds the triumphalism of the powerful, enabling them to engage in behaviour that is ultimately destructive to the health of their beloved capitalism itself.
...
The High Pay Centre is right to argue for workers’ representation on remuneration boards. Stronger trade unions would also mean countervailing pressure against the concentration of wealth and power in such few hands. And protests by the likes of UK Uncut highlight the injustice of tax avoidance. All this could be helpful.

But the problem with executives such as Bob Dudley isn’t just them – it’s also us. For until we shake off this weary resignation, the well–heeled will continue to enjoy their decadent party – in the knowledge that we’re the ones paying for it.

- But of course, the Libs are headed in the direction of further privileging the corporate sector. On that front, Steven Chase reports on their refusal to allow any Parliamentary study of arms exports, while Peter Mazereeuw notes their demurral on any discussion of accountability for exploitative mining operators. 

- PressProgress highlights the fact that the underpayment of women is a matter of systemic discrimination, not personal choice. And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines how the Trans-Pacific Partnership will entrench a corporate right to low-wage labour at the expense of workers throughout the Pacific region.

- Which should be a problem for all concerned, as Duff McCutcheon argues that a living wage can be just as beneficial for the employer who provides it as for the employees who earn it.

- Finally, Susan Peters discusses how poverty and other social determinants of health are finding their way into patients' medical evaluations.

New column day

Here, on how political fund-raising scandals in Ontario and British Columbia only highlight the complete lack of rules governing donations in Saskatchewan.

For further reading...
- SCOTUS' Citizens United decision is here (PDF). And Michael Hiltzik discussed its effect after the fact, while Charles Wohlforth offered a personal view on how fund-raising affects political decision-making.
- Martin Regg Cohn broke the news about Ontario's fund-raising quotas for cabinet ministers here. And Adrian Morrow followed up by exposing both a fund-raiser closely tied to the Hydro One privatization's beneficiaries, and the connection between corporate subsidies and donations.
- Meanwhile, Gary Mason reported on Christy Clark's five-figure access fees. And the CP reported on the dividing line between the B.C. Libs who want to keep the status quo as long as they can, and the NDP which is pushing for limits.
- The Globe and Mail's series on money and politics featured a column on Saskatchewan's particularly outdated rules governing political donations. And Tammy Robert has been reviewing the current state of donations in Saskatchewan.
- Finally, the CP surveys fund-raising rules across Canada. And Duff Conacher points out that any province looking to remove big-money donations from its political system will find a prime example in Quebec.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty comments on how massive amounts of wealth are both being siphoned out of our social systems, and used to buy the politicians who facilitate those transfers:

(A)t root, the Panama Papers are not about tax. They’re not even about money. What the Panama Papers really depict is the corruption of our democracy.

Following on from LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers confirm that the super-rich have effectively exited the economic system the rest of us have to live in. Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same rules the rest of us have to follow. Tax havens are simply one reflection of that reality. Discussion of offshore centres can get bogged down in technicalities, but the best definition I’ve found comes from expert Nicholas Shaxson who sums them up as: “You take your money elsewhere, to another country, in order to escape the rules and laws of the society in which you operate.” In so doing, you rob your own society of cash for hospitals, schools, roads…

But those who exited our societies are now also exercising their voice to set the rules by which the rest of us live. The 1% are buying political influence as never before.
...
Hirschman argued that citizens could protest against a system in one of two ways: voice or exit. Fed up with your local school? Then you can exercise your voice and take it up with the headteacher. Alternatively, you can exit and take your child to a private school.

In Britain and in America, the super-rich have broken Hirschman’s law – they are at one and the same time exercising economic exit and political voice. They can have their tax-free cake and eat it.

- Meanwhile, Jared Bernstein offers new evidence that tax cuts for the rich bear no relationship to economic development. And David Lawder reports on what looks to be a start in developing international standards to rein in tax evasion, while Rajesh Makwana points out that a global tax body may be needed to overcome corporate resistance at the national level in developed countries.

- Richard V. Reeves, Edward Rodrigue and Elizabeth Kneebone write about the multiple dimensions of poverty and inequality which put people at a fundamental disadvantage in seeking social inclusion. And Dave Lieber laments the use of the criminal justice system to lock offenders into perpetual debt servitude.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom writes that a time of low oil prices and reduced public revenues is exactly the point when it makes sense to implement consumer-level carbon pricing.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Lookout cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Scott Vrooman rightly makes the point that increased wealth at the top tends to splash outside a country's borders rather than trickling down. And CBC News reports on how that process has been facilitated by KPMG and other firms wining and dining executives of the Canada Revenue Agency who are supposed to be ensuring their clients' contribution to a fair society.

- Paul Krugman describes the symptoms of robber-baron stagnation - which all too closely match the state of the U.S.' economy. And Ian Welsh outlines an economy which would serve the interests of people rather than profiteers.

- Unfortunately, the Libs seem bent on pushing the economics of destruction - not only by pushing more arms sales abroad, but also by looking to buy into another round of Star Wars missile defence schemes.

- Laurence Mathieu-Leger and Ashifa Kassam write about the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat and elsewhere. And Charlie Angus discusses the desperate need to go beyond band-aid solutions.

- Finally, John Oliver looks into credit reports and other background checks - and highlights how information which is useless at best and grossly inaccurate at worse is serving to keep people from finding work, housing and other necessities of life:

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Robert Frank discusses the essential role of luck in determining the opportunities we have - and how the advantages of a strong social fabric are too often ignored by the people who benefit the most from them:

(C)hance plays a far larger role in life outcomes than most people realize. And yet, the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.

That’s troubling, because a growing body of evidence suggests that seeing ourselves as self-made—rather than as talented, hardworking, and lucky—leads us to be less generous and public-spirited. It may even make the lucky less likely to support the conditions (such as high-quality public infrastructure and education) that made their own success possible.
...
Being born in a favorable environment is an enormous stroke of luck. But maintaining such an environment requires high levels of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education—something Americans have lately been unwilling to support. Many factors have contributed to this reticence, but one in particular stands out: budget deficits resulting from a long-term decline in the United States’ top marginal tax rate.

A recent study by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels, and Jason Seawright found that the top 1 percent of U.S. wealth-holders are “extremely active politically” and are much more likely than the rest of the American public to resist taxation, regulation, and government spending. Given that the wealthiest Americans believe their prosperity is due, above all else, to their own talent and hard work, is this any wonder? Surely it’s a short hop from overlooking luck’s role in success to feeling entitled to keep the lion’s share of your income—and to being reluctant to sustain the public investments that let you succeed in the first place.

- Brennan Leffler exposes how employers are all too often able to brazenly flout legal protection for workers due to a lack of enforcement. Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Geoffrey Vendeville report on the multiple disadvantages facing women in the retail sector, while Mary Cornish studies the broader gender gap. And Teuila Fuatai surveys how some workers have been fighting for a fair minimum wage across Canada.

- The Economist examines the plunging cost of solar energy which figures to radically reshape our energy choices based on comparative costs alone, while Rebecca Penty reports that tar sands operators are well past believing it's worth developing new megaprojects. Daniel Oberhaus notes that with a political push, we could end our reliance on fossil fuels within a decade. And Chris D'Angelo writes that the oil industry has gone far out of its way to make sure decisions about our energy options aren't based on facts.

- Finally, Michael Butler weighs in on the Libs' failure to move ahead with a national pharmacare plan. And the McMaster Health Forum looks to the UK's experience to argue for pharmacare in Canada.

#YEG2016 Followup Links

While there's been plenty of ill-informed commentary since the NDP's convention last weekend, I'll take a moment to highlight a few of the followup points which deserve a read.

- Joshua Keep rightly recognizes the new leadership election as an opportunity for renewal, but no guarantee of improvement. Gerard Di Trolio focuses particularly on the prospects of an unabashedly left-wing leadership campaign. And Selina Chignall offers a look at what the NDP may be looking for in its next leader, while Samantha Power examines some of the competing forces within the party (though we shouldn't overstate the differences, particularly given that there was little apparent problem keeping all sides of any of the issues in the fold just an election cycle earlier).

- Gerald Caplan asks the question of whether the NDP's main problem has to do with its ability to be seen as a viable government. But I'd note in response that at least over the last two elections, the issue has been one of winning first-choice support rather than being in the consideration set of enough voters to contend for power.

- Nicholas Ellan offers a look at some of the tactics which worked for the Leap and Renewal movements at the NDP's convention - while discussing how they should inform the party's own work in the time to come. 

- Finally, Crawford Kilian points out that the most extreme response to the Leap Manifesto resolution amounts to an attempt to deny the glaringly obvious. And lest anybody think the issue is at all new based on the development of the Leap Manifesto itself, see my earlier discussion in this post and column.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Alexander Panetta reports on the G20's agreement on the need to crack down on tax evasion - as well as the steps Canada needs to take to get our own house in order:

The final communique warned of actions against countries that don't agree within a year to adopt bank-reporting standards being promoted by international agencies.
...
One section of the G20 communique applies to more countries, including Canada. It says countries must do a better job of tracking down the true owners of companies, specifically those who might be hiding behind strawmen.

Dennis Howlett says Canada is currently in non-compliance with that provision. The executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness says oversight is especially weak in some provinces.

"Canada has a lot of work to do to comply with the international standards on transparency of beneficial ownership," he said.
...
A recent report by the group Transparency International said Canada runs afoul of multiple internationally-agreed standards set by the G20. It says Canadian law doesn't properly define beneficial ownership — the true identity of people drawing profit from a company. It also says authorities aren't required to track their identity, nor can they easily access their identity.

- Steven Chase confirms that the Libs' choice to approve a massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia came long after they were aware of increasing human rights abuses. And Susana Mas highlights the Libs' limited and selective disclosure of the facts they're willing to share publicly even now.

- Raul Aldaz reviews Gianluca Passarelli's study of the presidentialization of political parties around the world. And in what looks to offer a prime example, Tim Naumetz points out Justin Trudeau's plan to take any remaining policy-making levers out of the hands of the Libs' membership.

- Duff Conacher suggests that we can look to Quebec for an example in taking big money out of party politics.

- Finally, Trish Kahle discusses the need and opportunity for the labour and environmental movements to develop shared goals, rather than allowing cynical corporate interests to pit them against each other:

Environmental politics must become generalized in the labor movement, and vice versa. The language of climate justice has already begun to infuse a sense of class politics into environmentalism, and green groups’ support for recent labor struggles is a promising step forward. Initiatives like the Labor Network for Sustainability, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and the BlueGreen Alliance are helping to connect the dots. But environmentalists must go further, acknowledging that there can be no real solution to the energy crisis without the input and leadership of the people who already do the work. Understanding the climate crisis as part of neoliberalism’s larger attack on public welfare and democracy (with the impacts, like all social failings in the United States, experienced more acutely by people of color and particularly by African Americans) can help expand the terrain on which both unions and climate activists struggle.

Ultimately, we live in the world we build. That world is both social and ecological, constantly made and remade through what sociologist Jason Moore has described as “the web of life.” If organized labor—and the climate—are to have a fighting chance, unions must offer real alternatives to the world of “shared sacrifice” and dead zones, of poisoning by austerity, of cheap fuels and cheap lives. What would it take for today’s coal-belt communities, channeling the Miners for Democracy, to fight not against EPA regulations but for jobs restoring lands destroyed by mountaintop removal mining? What would it take for union activists to have a meaningful say at the next international climate talks?

This work is just beginning. But with a shared vision to guide it, labor environmentalism can take us far. Its core demand is simple: to build a world that all of us, not just the rich or white, can actually live in.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes about the need for a Bernie Sanders in Canada to highlight and oppose the privilege of the wealthy few:

It is in this context of blatant unfairness — rules for the rich and rules for the rest — that politicians like Bernie Sanders have become so popular.

People are angry. And rightfully so. They play by the rules. Young people did what they were told. They are more educated than at any time in history and yet they face precarious employment and uncertainty and often bucketloads of debt. People are told to lower their expectations, especially over what the state should be providing.

And along comes Bernie, who says it doesn’t have to be this way. There is wealth. The problem is not that as a society we can’t afford free post-secondary education or universal health care, the problem is as a society we can’t afford rich people who don’t pay their taxes. We can’t afford to lose billions of dollars annually in tax revenues to tax havens.

We can’t afford to have an unfair tax system and Canada’s has grown increasingly unfair.

We need a Bernie Sanders in Canada. Someone who will change the conversation and put entitlement on the table. And then squash it.

- Jim Coyle discusses the latest UNICEF report showing that the poorest Canadian children are facing increasing disparities in health and well-being. And the CP reports on the urgent need for investment in First Nations in particular to close the gap.

- Andrew Jackson points out the unfairness in using increasingly unequal lifespans as an excuse to cut pensions and other income supports in a way which places the heaviest burden on lower-income workers. 

- Tammy Robert examines Saskatchewan's archaic political fund-raising laws, and starts tracing the Saskatchewan Party's largest donors over the years. And Jon Schwarz highlights Barack Obama's take on the influence of money in politics.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig questions why we've seen a knee-jerk response attacking the Leap Manifesto, rather than the global environmental calamity it's intended to help avert.

Musical interlude

Paul van Dyk - Time of our Lives

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- George Monbiot discusses how neoliberal ideology has managed to take over as the default assumption in global governance - despite its disastrous and readily visible effects:

(T)he past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

- And Mike Small highlights how privatization schemes are predictably enriching private contractors at the expense of the general public without delivering the promised services. 

- Steven Chase reports on the Libs' deceptive attempt to dodge responsibility for approving the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia. Alison succinctly links the sale to its known consequences, while Neil MacDonald points out that there's no difference at all between the Cons and Libs in their determination to push military exports at the expense of human rights. And both Michael Harris and the Globe and Mail's editorial board tear into the Libs for their hypocrisy and dishonesty.

- Meanwhile, Desmond Cole reminds us that Canadian torture victims are being met with utter contempt by the Trudeau Libs.

- Finally, Bruce Campbell writes that there's been virtually no progress on rail safety since the Lac-Mégantic disaster. And Mike De Souza notes that contrary to the spin of pipeline proponents, there's reason for concern that similar regulatory neglect and corporate greed connected to pipelines can result in damage on an equally large scale.

A place for discussion

Following up on yesterday's column, I'll expand somewhat on some of the decisions the NDP may want to consider as (or before) it elects new leaders. And since the recent federal convention has been treated by other commentators as everything from a shining example of party democracy in action to an absolute calamity, let's start at that level - with a particular focus on what should be seen as having worked and not in Edmonton.

I'll start by taking the view that whatever one's views on the merits, the convention's handling of resolutions related to the Leap Manifesto should be seen as an excellent example as to how policy debate can happen within a party.

Plenty of work went into developing a main resolution and informing members (and the public) about it. The convention's resolution panel examined its options, and put forward a primary resolution which addressed concerns about the original wording. The underlying issue was one which left room for thoughtful debate even among the convention's featured speakers. And the debate on the floor featured meaningful contributions from a combination of high-profile and rank-and-file members.

About all that was lacking was any sense of willingness to work with the outcome - which is unfortunate given that the resolution which passed leaves ample room for debate as to which portions of Leap should be accepted or not.

Unfortunately, time and capacity limitations make it impossible to engage in that level of discussion when it comes to all but a few resolutions at any given convention. And that seems to me to be a particularly important problem if conventions are seen as the sole direct opportunity for membership-level input into policies and choices.

But that's a problem which should be fairly readily fixed. The NDP's federal council has authority to make final decisions on policy between conventions - and the sheer volume of resolutions brought forward at every policy convention seems to me to signal some significant demand to ensure that more policy issues are dealt with.

With the council serving as a check on any mischief, there's no reason why the resolutions (PDF) which haven't yet been addressed by convention (and additional ideas put forward afterward) couldn't be made subject to systematic review and discussion through party channels. And the result of facilitating ongoing policy discussion could be to make the NDP and its policy conventions more productive in two ways.

First, it should help to narrow and clarify the issues up for discussion.

At the moment, there's a large amount of redundancy in the resolutions submitted since electoral district associations and commissions submit their own resolutions with little (if any) coordination. But the development of an ongoing policy forum should make it easier for EDAs and commissions to discuss and agree on the wording intended to address any given issue - which should reduce the number of resolutions submitted while better focusing their intent.

And second, the convention itself should run more efficiently and accomplish more if members' concerns have been addressed in advance, or can be addressed afterward.

In particular, there should be less room for argument about how much time is devoted to any specific policy - or policy in general - at a convention if there's a readily-available alternative forum in which to carry on the discussion.

Of course, it will inevitably take time for a new process to be developed and implemented. And I'd fully expect some of the past issues to remain until members' expectations adapt to a new policy review process. But in the long run, I'd think it's possible to put both convention time and members' policy interest to better use by making sure needed conversations about the NDP's direction take place on a continuous basis.