Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Equality Trust highlights the perpetual concentration of wealth among an extremely privileged few in the UK. LOLGOP points out how U.S. Republicans would rather let people die than see them adequately sustained by a fair minimum wage and secure social supports. And Paul Solman writes about the effects of poverty on cognitive function in light of research showing how a lack of income consumes mental resources. 

- Tom Parkin warns that both Doug Ford and Jason Kenney similarly want to similarly take away from nearly everybody to further enrich the wealthy, while holding out hope that Ontarians will instead vote for change for the better:

About 10 days ago, Jason Kenney, Alberta’s United Conservative Party Leader, pledged a $900 million tax cut for Albertans earning over $129,000 — the top 10%.

Yes, that’s $900 million for people who already have the most, taken from everyone else. It’s $900 million in cuts to health care and education and other services Canadians rely on.

And last week, in Ontario, PC Leader Doug Ford joined this exclusive club of Canadian politicians who help those in exclusive clubs. Not to be outdone by Kenney, Ford promised to give away $2.3 billion in public money, with the maximum benefit going to those in the top tax bracket.
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Ford won’t say what he’d cut and privatize. He just waves it away with one word — “efficiencies.” Just a $20 billion cut — it won’t hurt a bit. Believe me, folks.

Canadians have been on this cut and privatize journey for a couple of decades now. But maybe something is changing.
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Canadians are on a treadmill. The Conservatives cut — so we throw them out and put in the Liberals. Then the Liberals cut — so we toss them out and vote the Conservative back in. And nothing changes.

[Andrea] Horwath’s early success suggests Canadians may want off the treadmill. I’ll wager even many people who get these tax cuts would rather have it invested in a better society.

Cynical politicians have been crushing Canadians’ hopes by turning politics into a competition between bad and worse, selfishness and greed. But maybe they underestimate Canadians.

- Meanwhile, Chris York reports on a growing activist movement demanding a new deal for UK workers.

- Bethany Lindsey discusses the dangers of trying to base a province's standard of living on constantly increasing real estate values rather than actual economic development. And Sean McElwee and Henry Kraemer write about the need for housing policy based on making rent more affordable.

- Kevin Taft points out a few key facts about the oil industry's domination of Alberta politics. And Christopher Guly comments on the collective insanity driving the push for the Trans Mountain expansion.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk notes that a continued refusal to be honest about the Global Transportation Hub scandal represents just one more way in which nothing has changed for the Saskatchewan Party under Scott Moe.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Dana Brown and Thomas Hanna discuss the possibility of a public option for access to medication in the U.S. And while the Winnipeg Free Press warns that Brian Pallister might want to stand in the way of a national pharmacare program, that hardly seems a reasonable excuse to discard the possibility.

- Elaine Povich reports on the unexpectedly high revenue from Seattle's soda tax.

- Michael Geist is duly skeptical of the latest attempt to excuse the gouging of Canadian consumers by the telecommunications sector, while Bill Curry reports on Jim Balsillie's warnings about the spread of surveillance capitalism. And Yves Engler reminds us that rather than reining in the excesses of Stephen Harper's surveillance state, the Trudeau Libs are pouring more money and power into extending it.

- Ivan Ascher points out why corporate thinking patterns won't lead to the action we need to combat climate change, while Chantelle Bellrichard reports on Kinder Morgan's willingness to accommodate Nestle and other business interests even as it ignores the needs of people who stand to be affected by any Trans Mountain expansion. And Tom Embury-Dennis notes that Costa Rica's government leadership has led it toward becoming the world's first decarbonized society.

- Finally, Drew Brown rightly slams the plans of Jason Kenney and Alberta's UCP to forcibly out LGBT children to their parents.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Alan Freeman discusses the U.S.' decline based on anti-tax dogma - and warns of the same result in Canada if we don't stand up for our collective interests:

The U.S. has always been a capitalist society but it always believed in meritocratic principles, allowing smart, hard-working individuals to advance through strong public schools and publicly-funded state universities. That’s all but disappeared now as is social mobility in the U.S. Better chance of getting ahead if you’re a child of immigrants in Canada than south of the border.

I’m convinced this is not a winning strategy for America or U.S. business long-term. Impoverished government will mean crumbling infrastructure, an under-educated work force and huge social problems.

Thankfully, we’re not there yet in Canada.

The libertarian right has always been weaker here and despite the Harper government’s best efforts — the unnecessary cut in the GST is the most egregious example of its boneheaded fiscal management — Canada’s education, health and social systems remain adequately funded by tax revenues.

But I worry every time groups like the Business Council of Canada start complaining about the need to match the Trump corporate tax cuts, for the sake of “competitiveness” and threaten all sorts of dire consequences if we don’t march in lock-step with the Republican right. If we follow that advice too closely, our children will soon be studying from ripped 30-year old textbooks on computers running Windows 98.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford crunches the numbers to show how that pattern is playing out in Australia's budget - with a right-wing government assuming wage growth while taking steps which suppress it. Robert Sweeny comments on the consequences of Danny Williams' upward redistribution of income. And David Macdonald and Sheila Block point out how Doug Ford's "middle class" tax slashing would primarily benefit the wealthy, while Michael Laxer notes that Ford's subsidies for poverty-level wages would encourage employers to rely on exploiting workers.

- Amy Hadley reports on the individual effects of Ontario's basic income pilot, while the Green Institute offers a discussion paper (PDF) on the combination of a secure basic income and a reduction in the work people need to perform to survive. And Dayton Martindale interviews David Graeber about busy work which keeps people employed but unhappy, while David Spencer discusses the health implications of excessive work.

- Chris Dillow wonders whether the effect of a job guarantee would be to make capitalism more sustainable, or to lay the groundwork for a new economic structure. And Annie Lowrey notes that there's still a great deal of uncertainty as to what the U.S. Democrats' developing promises on the subject actually mean.

- Miles Kampf-Lassin discusses the Workplace Democracy Act which would at least provide U.S. workers with far more ability to organize.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk writes that the fallout from the La Loche shootings highlights the continued lack of mental health support in Saskatchewan - particularly in rural communities.

Musical interlude

Wide Mouth Mason - Midnight Rain

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Gary Younge comments on the highly selective willingness of far too many privileged people to acknowledge suffering around them. And Paul Krugman calls out the Trump administration's gratuitous cruelty toward the people who already have the least:

There’s something fundamentally obscene about this spectacle. Here we have a man who inherited great wealth, then built a business career largely around duping the gullible — whether they were naïve investors in his business ventures left holding the bag when those ventures went bankrupt, or students who wasted time and money on worthless degrees from Trump University. Yet he’s determined to snatch food from the mouths of the truly desperate, because he’s sure that somehow or other they’re getting away with something, having it too easy.
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In the end, I don’t believe there’s any policy justification for the attack on food stamps: It’s not about the incentives, and it’s not about the money. And even the racial animus that traditionally underlies attacks on U.S. social programs has receded partially into the background.

No, this is about petty cruelty turned into a principle of government. It’s about privileged people who look at the less fortunate and don’t think, “There but for the grace of God go I”; they just see a bunch of losers. They don’t want to help the less fortunate; in fact, they get angry at the very idea of public aid that makes those losers a bit less miserable.

And these are the people now running America.

- Meanwhile, CBC News reports on the continuing effects of the Saskatchewan Party's destruction of STC on people with disabilities who relied on it. 

- Sheila Block points out the longstanding gap between what Ontario governments have invested in health care and what's needed to properly care for patients - while noting that voters will have a chance to set the province on the right track in this spring's election.

- Lauren Pelley highlights the barriers to dental care faced by low-income seniors in Toronto - and the resulting social costs. And Ake Blomqvist and Frances Woolley make the case for universal dental coverage.

- Finally, Bob Weber reports on new research showing that the environmental impact of the oil sands is larger than previously known. And Jodi McNeil reminds us that the public will likely end up paying for the mess left behind by oil operators who can't be bothered to keep their promises once any profits run out.

New column day

Here, on how Canada is falling further behind the rest of the world on ensuring corporate transparency and recovering income stashed offshore.

For further reading...
- Transparency International's most recent report on beneficial ownership is here.
- Zach Dubinsky reported on both the UK's move toward transparency in its offshore territories, and Canada's complete lack of progress on the same issue at home. And lest anybody think the government hasn't been pressed on the issue, see the submissions of Canadians for Tax Fairness to the Finance Committee as discussed here.
- Dubinsky has also contrasted the hundreds of millions of dollars recovered by other countries in the wake of the Panama Papers against the lack of any definite numbers from the CRA.
- Finally, the study by Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman on the amount of money stashed offshore by the .01% is summarized here. And CTF's latest Canadian numbers based on traceable assets can be found here.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

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

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

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

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

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Summery cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Tom Parkin writes that greed is the only reason why we haven't yet completed a full health care system with a pharmacare program:

If we had a universal pharmacare plan — one that saves lives and relieves suffering — it would cost $4.6 billion less than the current hodge podge of private plans and government assistance, which leaves millions uninsured. That’s $4.6 billion wasted to get a bad result.

Raising the $5.9 billion isn’t the tough part. Two steps. First, reverse some of the massive tax cuts our politicians have given to businesses. The trickle down theory never worked anyway. And with universal pharmacare, businesses are going to save billions in payroll costs.
...

No, the tough part is finding politicians with the courage to squeeze $4.6 billion out of big pharma and insurance companies. Because when you squeeze $4.6 billion out of a wasteful, inefficient industry that doesn’t deliver the goods, they have 4.6 billion reasons to fight back.

The morality won’t matter. Not the suffering and dying. Not the inefficiency. When big money is at risk, killing is just part of the process. Look at tobacco. Or guns. Or opioids.

Canadians need to support those politicians who are willing to win this fight. Because if we don’t, they can’t. And the unnecessary and immoral dying, suffering and waste will continue.

- Meanwhile, the Star's editorial board calls for greater transparency in the money funneled by pharmaceutical manufacturers toward Canadian doctors.

- Daniel Dutton and Jennifer Zwicker point out that some of the most effective investments in health are aimed at socioeconomic improvements, while the Press Association reports on the UK's alarming increase in child poverty as an example of the consequences of ignoring the social determinants of health. And the Chronicle Herald's editorial board weighs in on the value of early childhood education as a long-term investment.

- Henry Farber, Daniel Herbst, Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu study (PDF) the connection between improved union organization rates and reduced inequality. And conversely, Anelyse Weiler and Amy Cohen discuss how the precarious legal status of seasonal farm workers leaves them ripe for abuse and exploitation.

- Finally, Vicky Mochama comments on the dangers of law enforcement treating journalism and activism as excuses for surveillance and disruption.

On full pictures

I've previously pointed out the obvious bad faith behind the Saskatchewan Party's attempt (PDF) to monetize existing agricultural practices as a substitute for actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions - and particularly the one-sided nature of that plan:

How we grow our crops, harvest our forests and protect our vital water systems will be critically important to how we prepare, respond and adapt to a changing climate.
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It’s important that Canada and its partner nations in the Paris Agreement develop accounting systems to credit past and future land use and management decisions that help sequester carbon.

Noticeably lacking is any discussion of the obvious converse: i.e. debiting land use practices which exacerbate climate change. And Carl Meyer's report on the impact of biofuels brings the issue into even sharper focus by pointing out how other jurisdictions are far ahead of Canada as a whole:

Canada is omitting a major source of pollution from its calculations of impacts of a key climate change policy, according to a federal document. The methodology is putting Canada at odds with policies adopted by both the United States and California.

The complex calculations tackle the carbon footprint of the worldwide expansion of biofuels crops. The biofuels industry uses agricultural products such as corn as well as other organic waste to convert into fuel that can be used in motorized vehicles. Canada's calculations appear to be omitting the impact of landscape changes required to grow the crops, such as deforestation, which can pump more carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

The Moe government's treatment of similar methodologies to account for emission-exacerbating choices should provide a definitive answer as to whether it's actually the slightest bit interested in combating climate change, or merely trying to con the people who are. And there's little reason for optimism so far.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Luke Savage comments on Justin Trudeau's phony war against inequality:

His embrace of Keynesian economics has been equally ethereal. In 2015, apparently rebelling against the prevailing economic orthodoxy of austerity, the Liberal leader pledged to stimulate the economy through modest, deficit-financed social investment.

Upon implementation, however, some $15bn was channelled into an “infrastructure bank”, geared to attract private financing. The promises of “socially useful, non-commercial projects like childcare or affordable housing to cash-strapped cities” will take a back seat to those with “revenue-generating potential”. And while investors are likely to see big returns, it is the public who will shoulder much of the risk.

Trudeau has also remained ambivalent towards the kind of big programs that could actually redistribute wealth in a meaningful way. On childcare, for example, he favours a means-tested approach, rather than the universal, public provision of a desperately needed service. And in a 2016 conversation with a low-wage worker he dismissed the prospect of raising the minimum wage, echoing the talking points of the Canadian business lobby: “Maybe everything just gets more expensive or we have jobs leaving. We have to be very careful about that.” (A 2011 University of California, Berkeley study found the effects of raising the minimum wage on prices to be negligible at best. And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has argued that service sector jobs that tend to pay the minimum wage are by their very nature immobile, which suggests the threat of mass job flight is a myth.)
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(W)hile the prime minister calmly informs struggling workers that raising the minimum wage may have unintended consequences, the country’s wealthiest corporate executives get to keep their cushy tax advantages. The phony war rages on.

- Jennefer Laidley offers some suggestions to ensure income security in Ontario. And Eleanor Aigne Roy reports on Jacinda Ardern's push to find shelter for every homeless person in New Zealand before its winter hits - serving as a prime example as to what social policy can look like when it's actually aimed at meeting people's needs rather than putting off action.

- Ethan Trudeau comments on the value of organized labour and cooperative businesses in ensuring that prosperity is widely shared. And Jake Johnson offers a look at the regrets of workers who voted for Donald Trump based on the false promise of right-wing populism.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey writes about the real threat posed by the ignorant rage of the anti-woman alt-right.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Tom Parkin discusses the need for a new Tommy Douglas to start leading the way toward national social programs - and the hope that Andrea Horwath can earn that role in Ontario's provincial election:

Since Douglas’s time, Canadian health care has been defended from periodic rounds of cuts. But only the rare politician has picked up the threads of Douglas’s legacy in an attempt to extend health care. One of those rare times may be coming.

If she is elected premier next month, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath vows to end the cuts causing the current bout of hallway medicine. But she’s also pledged to build on Douglas’s medicare legacy by adding pharmacare and dental care. And those plans—and her child care pledge—could set in motion a new era in co-operative federalism that takes those plans across Canada.
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(W)ith 80 per cent of voters repeatedly telling pollsters they want change, between Horwath and Ford there couldn’t be a more stark contrast. If Horwath is the new Tommy Douglas, PC Leader Doug Ford is the exact opposite.

Horwath sees social programs as critical to our prosperity. Ford views them as costs to be cut. Horwath promises to add new drug and dental plans, paying for it with higher taxes on incomes over $220,000. If she can pull out a win, that’ll build on Douglas’s legacy. Ford offers more corporate tax cuts and a continuation of Wynne’s privatization schemes. His election would result in billions and billion in cuts—eroding what Douglas built.
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(W)ith provinces bickering and the Trudeau Liberals off course, a Ford win would bring even more confrontation and division to federal-provincial politics. But initiatives by a Premier Horwath could revive co-operative federalism and get Ottawa back on track. Her ideas offer the hope of a more co-operative federation and a stronger Canadian identity. Douglas’s efforts sure did.

- Meanwhile, Gary Mason is genuinely pleased to thrilled to see John Horgan's government making housing more affordable through a more fair property tax system. And David Camfield discusses the importance of building a stronger progressive movement on the prairies.

- Robert Cribb, Carolyn Jarvis and Andrew Bailey report on the embarrassing pollution from Canadian refineries compared to their southern counterparts nearly two decades after Canada was supposed to adopt U.S. standards.

- Doyle Rice reports on the unsurprising news that greenhouse gases are at their highest point in human history (and far beyond). James Wilt points out the credibility problems with the climate change data the Libs have recently unveiled. And Aaron Wherry figures there's now a consensus on the need to reduce emissions - though I'd think it's more likely the Cons' plan is once again merely to criticize any form of action which seems like it could possibly be implemented.

- Finally, Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan offer an important reminder about the criminalization of dissent - and particularly the Indigenous movement seeking to protect land and water.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Alex Himelfarb warns about the dangers of participating in Donald Trump's race to the bottom for public revenues - and the importance of highlighting the value of collective funding for social priorities:

Sure, our tax revenues as a share of the overall economy are lower than they’ve been in over five decades. Yes, government expenditures are lower than they have been since the days before we had public pensions, medicare and mass education. But more tax cuts are still offered up as the best—or even the only—option.

The failure of decades of tax-cutting to yield the promised increases in innovation and productivity has not constrained the willingness of some political parties and governments to treat ever-deeper cuts, especially for businesses and the rich, as indisputably good economic policy. If past cuts didn’t have quite the effect they were meant to, they say, perhaps the cuts just weren’t deep enough. Failed economic ideas don’t die easily.

Clearly, Canadian politicians cannot ignore the implications of tax cuts or other major economic policy changes in the United States. But they would be wise to ask what our neighbour may be giving up with these latest cuts, and where our comparative advantage might really lie. We oughtn’t to assume the benefits of tax cuts or to ignore their costs.
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Tax cuts never pay for themselves. Invariably, they have real costs: public services are squeezed and opportunities to improve government programs lost, with the consequences falling most heavily on the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and on future generations who of course don’t get to vote.

Ironically, as we weaken government and undermine public services, as wait times go up while access goes down and out-of-pocket costs rise, we increasingly question just what our taxes are buying. Austerity is self-perpetuating.
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 Decades of austerity, during which we have been asked to view ourselves as primarily taxpayers and consumers rather than as citizens pursuing some common good, have no doubt reshaped our collective view of taxes. So long as taxes are viewed as a burden, or worse, a punishment, rather than as how we operationalize the common good, austerity will continue to blunt the political imagination and limit our sense of what’s possible.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who died just over a year ago, spent the latter part of his career documenting the decline of the collective, the loss of trust in one another and in our governments, the loss of confidence that we can together shape the future. He worried that our collective action problems—those things we can solve only together—have never been more challenging, but that our collective toolkit has been severely weakened by decades of austerity. Rethinking taxes, which are, after all, how we pay for those things we do together because we could never do them at all or as well on our own, will be essential to rebuilding the collective.

We cannot hope even to begin to achieve a just transition to a green economy, or to provide a measure of economic security in an increasingly precarious world, or to reverse growing inequality and persistent poverty if we don’t reconnect taxes to the common good.

- Frances Coppola challenges the mindset that would sacrifice human well-being in the pursuit of balanced government budgets. And Mathew Snow writes about the problems with reliance on the charity of the obscenely wealthy rather than a fair system of social revenue.

- Sophie Hardach examines Thomas Piketty's latest work on the reversal in political orientation based on education. And Branko Milanovic discusses the ongoing (and indeed increasing) relevance of Karl Marx' analysis of capitalism.

- Andrew Nikiforuk observes that government revenues from fossil fuels and other natural resources have been drying up over a period of decades. Stephen Leahy estimates the climate costs of a Trans Mountain expansion at $8.7 billion - without factoring in the added emissions from the end use of any fuel shipped through the pipeline. And Tom Rand notes that the Trans Mountain debate is highlighting the need for everybody to contribute to emission reductions, rather than demanding special dispensations based on the ongoing choice to prioritize oil over other economic options.

- Finally, Edgardo Sepulveda studies the public costs of decades of privatization and politicization of Ontario's power system.

Musical interlude

Kikagaku Moyo - Kodama

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Terry Schwadron writes about Donald Trump's war on the poor, while Rosemary Feurer and Chad Pearson highlight how U.S. businesses and their political pawns have undermined the labour movement. And David Climenhaga and PressProgress point out that we should expect exactly the same from Jason Kenney should he get the chance to make life worse for Albertans.

- Meanwhile, Matt Bruenig suggests that workers learn from the corporate consolidation of power to push for coordinated wage levels:

In theory, setting wages across the economy in a coordinated way through centralized labor agreements can solve both of these problems. It can make it to where you can employ everyone normally without risking inflation and can stop the wage suppression caused by low population and job-seeking frictions.

To understand why centralized labor agreements can solve the inflation problem that [a job guarantee] can’t, it is useful to conceptualize wage-price inflation as a classic collective action problem. Each individual, acting alone, has an incentive to maximize their wage, but if all individuals do it simultaneously and beyond a certain level, it sets off unsustainable wage-price inflation that ends up biting the workers one way or another. Coordinated wage-setting can solve this problem by ensuring that workers, and their representatives, hash out appropriate wage levels every few years. If the worker groups act responsibly, they will take note of what sort of wages productivity growth will permit and restrain their wage growth accordingly. In theory, this sort of wage price-fixing means that you can nip wage-price inflation in the bud and push unemployment all the way down without the need for jobseekers to bid down wages.

Centralized labor agreements also solve the employer market power problems that antitrust cannot. Rural workers will never have that many employers to choose from, but if those employers are forced to abide by the central wage agreements, the workers will be still be compensated fairly. Additionally, the diminished power that results from job-switching frictions need not suppress wages where strong unions can provide countervailing power that does not rely upon the threat of switching jobs.

- Neela Banerjee discusses how the U.S.' regulatory apparatus - and particularly the EPA under Scott Pruitt - has been turned into a servant of the corporate interests it should be regulating. And Carl Meyer reports on how the power of the state is being used to stifle reporting on public protests in Canada.

- Luke Savage reviews two new books on the causes and implications of increasingly authoritarian right-wing parties. 

- Finally, Sachin Jain comments on the role social interaction plays in individual health.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jake Johnson writes about the obscene amount of money handed to the wealthy in the U.S. by the Republicans' tax scam. And Robert Reich discusses how the spread of inequality and isolation helped to lay the groundwork for Donald Trump's destructive presidency.

- Meanwhile, Mel Rothenburger points out how the UCP-fueled attack on an honourary degree for David Suzuki should highlight the danger of universities seeing themselves as bound by corporate actors (or their political puppets). 

- Carl Meyer reports on a push from the chiefs of over a hundred First Nations in opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Bill Hafker acknowledges that the oil industry needs to come to terms with the fight against climate change. And Damien Gillis discusses Justin Trudeau's two-faced handling of environmental and energy issues.

- Nick Falvo laments Scott Moe's decision to make housing even more unaffordable for Saskatchewan's residents who already have the least. And Eli Day interviews Ryan Cooper about the importance of affordable public housing - along with the urgent need for far more (and far better) housing than is currently available.

- Finally, Jordan Pearson cautions against drawing too many conclusions from basic income pilot projects which are too small in scope to generate the benefits which have already been identified.

New column day

Here, on Regina's longstanding rail-freeway conflict as an example of the need to take the long view of infrastructure decisions - and the dangers of locking ourselves into dying and dirty industries with the choices we make on pipelines.

For further reading...
- CBC reported on the City of Regina's feasibility study into moving rail lines which currently cross the Ring Road. And Craig Baird has previously pointed out why options such as an overpass/underpass are likely off the table due to the disruption to existing traffic.
- Ryan McNally reported on the City's motion dealing with solar energy. And Paul Dechene offers a preliminary (and highly affordable) look at what we should expect to see reported back.
- Finally, I'll point again to David Roberts' observations as to how infrastructure lock-in may affect the fight against climate change.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Yanis Varoufakis discusses the loss of freedom when one's whole life needs to be planned around corporate wishes and sensitivities:

A capacity to fence off a part of one’s life, and to remain sovereign and self-driven within those boundaries, was paramount to the liberal conception of the free agent and his or her relationship with the public sphere. To exercise freedom, individuals needed a safe haven within which to develop as genuine persons before relating – and transacting – with others. Once constituted, our personhood was to be enhanced by commerce and industry – networks of collaboration across our personal havens, constructed and revised to satisfy our material and spiritual needs.

But the dividing line between personhood and the external world upon which liberal individualism based its concepts of autonomy, self-ownership, and, ultimately, freedom could not be maintained. The first breach appeared as industrial products became passé and were replaced by brands that captured the public’s attention, admiration, and desire. Before long, branding took a radical new turn, imparting “personality” to objects. 

Once brands acquired personalities (boosting consumer loyalty immensely and profits accordingly), individuals felt compelled to re-imagine themselves as brands. And today, with colleagues, employers, clients, detractors, and “friends” constantly surveying our online life, we are under incessant pressure to evolve into a bundle of activities, images, and dispositions that amounts to an attractive, sellable brand. The personal space essential to the autonomous development of an authentic self – the condition that makes inalienable self-ownership possible – is now almost gone. The habitat of liberalism is disappearing.
...

The irony is that liberal individualism seems to have been defeated by a totalitarianism that is neither fascist nor communist, but which grew out of its own success at legitimizing the encroachment of branding and commodification into our personal space. To defeat it, and thus rescue the liberal idea of freedom as self-ownership, may require a comprehensive reconfiguration of property rights over the increasingly digitized instruments of production, distribution, collaboration, and communication.

Would it not be a splendid paradox if, 200 years after the birth of Karl Marx, we decided that, in order to save liberalism, we must return to the idea that freedom demands the end of unfettered commodification and the socialization of property rights over capital goods?

- Meanwhile, Noah Smith points out that any dogma about "efficient markets" is rapidly being refuted by economic experience.

- D.C. Fraser reports on Scott Moe's insistence that Saskatchewan's low-income workers survive on the lowest minimum wage in Canada.

- David Roberts writes about the importance of supply-side policies as part of a full strategy to rein in climate change - with the particularly important advantage of avoiding infrastructure lock-in. And Michael Harris notes that Justin Trudeau's determination to instead tie Canada to a dying fossil fuel industry may represent his political undoing.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail's editorial board makes the case for Alberta to join the rest of the country in funding public services through a sales tax.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Contented cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Scott Gilmore discusses how Canada is actually backsliding in some crucial development goals. And Colin Gordon writes about the inequality growing on multiple fronts around the globe.

- Kathy Tomlinson uncovers a Vancouver real estate market rigged to benefit developers and speculators. And Ryan Cooper points out the importance of a meaningful social housing policy to ensure that development can benefit the people who actually need a home:

Upzoning advocates argue that if we simply went on a wild private building spree, we'd eventually burn through all the luxury demand and actually reduce the price of midrange and affordable units (as opposed to only slowing the rate of increase). But that could take easily take decades, if it even works at all.

Great big new social housing projects, by contrast — say, one million in California for starters — are a way to efficiently cram in tons and tons of housing supply directly where it is most socially necessary, not where it is most profitable. And unlike traditional American-style public housing which is means-tested for poor people only, social housing could be largely self-funding by including many tenants paying market or somewhat subsidized rents (though a good fraction would be reserved for poor and working-class people, of course). That would have the side benefit of making projects socioeconomically integrated, not poor-only ghettos.
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(B)ackers should abandon the neoliberal frame of this being a simple issue of free markets versus government over-regulation. Jonathan Chait, for instance, argues that while there may be complex sub-details, at bottom the housing crisis is explained by an "Econ 101 model of supply and demand." Gentrification is simply caused by "artificially constricted housing supply," and California progressives simply will have to choke down de-regulation and working with private developers if they want to solve the housing crisis. (It's a mark of how influential this frame is that both climate writer David Roberts and leftist Hamilton Nolan present the issue in much the same way.)

As we have seen, this is a terribly mistaken way of thinking about the issue. Neoliberal thinking is not just a highly sub-optimal way of addressing the problem, it is big source of the problem in the first place. NIMBY politics are bad, and often quite racist, but they are also in large part a natural outgrowth of the way the American housing market is structured. A great deal of NIMBYism is simply being a good capitalist by defending the value of one's major asset. (This raises the question of why so much American housing policy is dedicated to helping upper-middle class people put their money into a highly-leveraged, highly-illiquid speculative investment, but that's a subject for another post.)

Incoherent Republican-style notions about deregulation and the markets will be most convincing to the people dead-set against solving the housing crisis at all. Granting the reality that the state is inextricably part of all decisions about the ownership of property is more accurate, allows for better policies, and can then help create an anti-NIMBY coalition that might actually win.

- But if we needed another example of the Libs going in the opposite direction, Brent Patterson weighs in on their plans to turn public services into financial profit centres.

- Finally, Anna Mehler Paperny reports that Justin Trudeau has been trying to rewrite Canada's safe third country agreement with the U.S. - not to protect asylum seekers being denied a fair hearing under the Trump administration, but to further restrict when they're able to apply to be safe in Canada. And Brendan Kennedy and Michelle Shepard discuss how Canada is providing minimal aid to victims of war in Yemen while simultaneously arming the countries responsible.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Kady O'Malley writes that after years of delays on their promise to reassess Bill C-51, civil rights are just one more area where the Libs' proclamations about "open government" have given way to a closed-door process where only their plans are being given any meaningful consideration.

- Meagan Day makes the case for clinical pharmaceutical trials to be publicly funded (and their full results disclosed). But Jordan Press reports that rather than ensuring that matters of public interest are under public control, the Libs are bargaing ahead with to turn social services into opportunities for corporate profit extraction.

- David Climenhaga highlights the underreporting of workplace injuries in Alberta - and the importance of correcting that problem in order to ensure that safety rules can be effective:

Alberta government statistics for 2016 show that more than 45,500 workers suffered disabling injuries on the job. But because of underreporting, the researchers concluded, the real number was closer to 170,000, and that more than 400,000 experienced one workplace injury in 2016.

"The data suggest a breakdown in the internal responsibility system that is at the heart of the workplace health and safety system in the province," said Matsunaga-Turnbull, executive director of the Alberta Workers Health Centre.

Barnetson, an Athabasca University labour studies professor, acknowledged that Alberta's NDP Government legislated real improvements in worker health and safety when Labour Minister Christina Gray last year brought in the first major changes in occupation health and safety legislation in Alberta in more than 40 years.

However, Barnetson and Matsunaga-Turnbull suggested, the improvements legislated by the NDP won’t mean much without meaningful enforcement.

Accordingly, they called for more, and more vigorous, workplace inspections -- which, of course, would require the hiring of more inspectors. Other recommendations included publication of workplace safety orders, mandatory penalties that escalate for repeat offenders, public shaming of violators, prosecution of employers who retaliate against workers, and an end to the Tory blame-the-worker tactic of ticketing employees.

- Carl Meyer reports on the announcement of federal regulations addressing methane emissions - albeit only on the oil industry's preferred timetable. And Kate Lyons looks at some geoengineering possibilities to counter the effects of climate change.

- Finally, Tom Parkin writes that the Trans Mountain expansion may soon be going the same way as the Northern Gateway - and for the same reasons as the Trudeau Libs' neglect of Indigenous rights has become clear. 

[Edit: added link.]

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Martin Wolf reviews Mariana Mazzucato's The Value of Everything, including its distinction between value creation and value extraction. And Yvonne Roberts points out how millenial workers are being left with little but large debts as a result of inequality between classes and generations.

- Matthew Yglesias discusses the significance of a jobs guarantee as a matter of values, while noting that its goals may best be met indirectly. But Ian Welsh argues that we should instead work on ensuring a more fair allocation of resources by challenging the claim that people's worth is limited to what they can get paid through a job.

- Meanwhile, Hassan Yussuff writes that nobody should have to put up with harassment or violence as the price of keeping a job.

- The Council of Canadians, Sierra Club U.S. and Greenpeace Mexico jointly review the effects of NAFTA in limiting climate policy across North America. And Raisa Patel reports on the parliamentary budget officer's study showing that CETA's giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry will cost Canadians more than $500 million ever year.

- Finally, Joan Bryden reports on the warning of the acting chief electoral officer that the Libs have left any change to Stephen Harper's unfair election rules too late for matters to improve in time for the 2019 federal election.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne rightly criticizes the World Bank for trying to push discredited and inhumane trickle-down economics as a substitute for viable economic development.

- Gary Younge calls for some much-needed recognition of the toxic masculinity behind so many mass killings. And Nora Loreto examines the combination of atomization, insecurity and discrimination that leads to preventable violence.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman calls out the Republicans' war on the poor - which combines with their politics of bigotry to exacerbate all of those problems.

- Emma Gilchrist discusses the global shift toward cleaner energy - and the need to account for it in determining what to do with proposed fossil fuel infrastructure. Paul McKay laments the corporate media's lack of meaningful coverage of Canada's bitumen bubble. And Martin Patriquin comments on Justin Trudeau's cynicism in co-opting the language of the environmental movement while planning to ignore its concerns.

- Finally, APTN reports on the concept of Indigenous "support" for pipelines - which all too often results from the lack of anything close to sufficient resources to do anything but reluctantly accept whatever a corporate operator puts on the table.

Musical interlude

Big Sugar - Better Get Used To It

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Vanessa Williamson rebuts the myth that fair tax policy will drive away wealthy residents. And Mike Maciag notes that tax giveaways to the corporate sector and the wealthy serve only to exacerbate inequality within the population as a whole.

- Malika Sharma, Andrew Pinto and Arno Kumagai write that we should view the social determinants of health as factors which can and should be changed, rather than inevitabilities to be observed but not acted upon:

In our paper “Teaching the Social Determinants of Health: A Path to Equity or a Road to Nowhere?”, we explore how contemporary SDOH education does little to reduce health inequities, for two key reasons. First, most training fails to acknowledge that the social determinants of health are man-made results of social, economic, and political decisions in how money, power, and resources are (unequally) distributed in society. Second, emphasis is often placed on knowing rather than acting. Rattling off socioeconomic status, educational attainment, and food insecurity as contributors to poor health outcomes does little to change the situation of people actually living these realities.

As such, students do not gain skills to allow them to act at systemic or societal-levels. They may feel overwhelmed when faced with complex social circumstances, or may feel that addressing the social determinants of health is someone else’s problem. They may not recognize that failing to address the SDOH will limit any clinical intervention they suggest. In addition, covering the SDOH as a simply a list to be known allows medical institutions to say they have fulfilled their social responsibility mandate, without forcing a reckoning of how they may themselves perpetuate and benefit from the status quo.

- Catherine Colebrook discusses the need for better measuring sticks for economic and social development beyond GDP alone. And Ploy Achakulwisut points out the importance of accounting for the health effects of pollution in developing environmental policy.

- Finally, Larry Elliott comments on the exploitation inherent in the gig economy and other models of precarious work.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

New column day

Here, on the Trudeau Libs' biased approach to the Trans Mountain expansion - and the need to take a fair look now, rather than allowing Kinder Morgan to dictate timelines and play governments against each other and their constituents.

For further reading...
- Mike De Souza's report on the Libs' refusal to consider anything but approval of Trans Mountain is here. Thomas Sisk wrote about his experience trying to provide current science about the risks of a dilbit spill to the Trudeau government. And Andrew Nikiforuk offered needed background on the connection between Kinder Morgan and its origins in Enron.
- Trish Audette-Longo reports on the role of bots in manipulating the flow of information about Trans Mountain online.
- Both Sisk and Elan Global point out the utter incompatibility between any serious effort to rein in climate change and the continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.
- Denise Balkissoon writes about the importance of a just transition for workers in the resource sector.
- Finally, while the column doesn't go into any detail about Indigenous rights as another crucial aspect of the federal government's responsibility, Eriel Deranger offers an important look at the continued colonialism involved in the approval of a pipeline over the protests of affected communities.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Sunil Johal and Armine Yalnizyan discuss the importance of building an economy based on a race to the top in labour and environmental standards, rather than the pursuit of the lowest common denominator.

- Kevin Corinth and Claire Rossi-de Vries examine the importance of social ties as a buffer against homelessness. Suzanne Fitzpatrick reports that even social housing is becoming unaffordable in the UK. And Brakkton Booker reports on the Republicans' plans to ensure the same result in the U.S.

- Meanwhile, Heather Timmons comments on Mick Mulvaney's determination to turn a consumer protection bureau into a servant of the financial sector. And Kate Aronoff notes that the most scandalous part of Scott Pruitt's role in Donald Trump's cabinet is his determination to turn the U.S. into a full-on petro state.

- The Star weighs in on the Ontario NDP's ambitious yet responsible election platform. And Duncan Cameron offers a preview of the federal Libs' plan to once again use progressive language to paper over a fundamentally conservative agenda. 

- Finally, Andrew Jackson maps out the road toward a needed national pharmacare program.

On unequal treatment

With the Trans Mountain pipeline dominating as much news coverage as it has, it's inevitable that we'd see the usual debate as to the relative desirability of different types of economic paths come to the surface. And I'll point out just a couple of the which look to signal a distortion of the actual impact of different economic options in favour of oil (and at the expense of the public interest).

Let's start with Kevin Milligan's Globe and Mail column which has been thrown around repeatedly as a definitive statement that oil is a solution to inequality.

Unfortunately, Milligan's assertion isn't founded in any data addressing inequality in particular, but instead treats overall income as a proxy for equality without apparent explanation. So let's take a look at some data on the point which is supposedly being addressed.

In fact, for the approximate time period used by Milligan, inequality increased slightly in Canada as a whole. And the most obvious increase in terms of both before-tax and after-tax inequality in the broader time period when we've shifted toward reliance on natural resources occurred in Alberta, which Milligan singles out as an example of resource revenue reducing inequality:

The relationship between economy type and inequality does look to be ambiguous. (In particular, Saskatchewan reduced its inequality while also seeing a resource-based boost in incomes in the 1990s and 2000s.)

But there's certainly no basis to suggest that Canada's shift toward a resource economy in recent decades actually reduced inequality as a rule, either on a national scale or within any particular province. And Milligan's position is particularly jaw-dropping in minimizing even the possible results of redistributing the unequal wealth normally found in resource-dependent jurisdictions (including the ones charted above), while instead asking us to assume that "oil = equality!!!".

Meanwhile, the usual foil for resource development is a focus on value-added manufacturing. So let's turn to Kevin Carmichael's admonition that we shouldn't focus unduly on manufacturing jobs when "only about five per cent of employed Canadians work at a factory".

On its own, that's a fair statement. And Carmichael does note that the real implication of the composition of Canada's economy is that we should be more focused on services.

But if we're going to apply that raw-job standard to manufacturing with no allowance for spinoff effects, surely we need to do the same for the resource sector - which leads us to Statistics Canada's data on employment by sector. And that shows manufacturing providing 1,508,942 jobs in 2017 - compared to 199,780 for "Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction" combined.

The effect of singling out manufacturing for minimization is to create more space for the even more obviously-flawed argument to prioritize resource extraction above both competing sectors and the public interest - at a time when we're seeing far too many governments eager to do exactly that.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Oleg Komlik takes note of Wade Cole's research showing how income inequality affects political dynamics. And Hannah Finnie recognizes that young people are joining unions (among other forms of social activism) in order to gain some much-needed influence on both fronts, while Paul Krugman weighs in on the Republicans' war on education in an attempt to hold onto power.

- Arjumand Siddiqi and Faraz Vahid Shahidi write about the potential for Ontario's next government to improve health and social outcomes through improved income supports and labour market conditions for workers. And Peter Baker writes about the history of the minimum wage, as well as its place in the broader power struggle between workers and employers.

- Adam Gaffney points out that the U.S.' health care system is increasingly designed to inflate profits rather than to achieve health outcomes, while Lee Camp zeroes in on Goldman Sachs' admission that it sees curing diseases as bad for business. And Andrew Coyne notes that similar problems apply to the availability of prescription drugs in Canada - even as the Libs appear likely to ignore the growing body of evidence as to how the public would benefit if it was given priority over entrenched corporate interests for once.

- Finally, Rick Smith discusses the increasing recognition of the persistent hazard posed by plastic particles. 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Couched cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Louis Uchitelle discusses how the decline of organized labour in the U.S. has harmed not just workers' direct interests, but the economic sectors where unions previously thrived:

Want to make America great again and keep factories in the United States? Try strengthening labor unions.

That may seem counterintuitive, and certainly contrary to the direction the country has been moving in lately. But the reality is that when organized labor dug in its heels — as it did regularly in the United States until late in the 20th century — manufacturing companies thought twice about shutting a factory and transferring production to another country.
...
As union membership declines, labor has less leverage to intervene in the management of a corporation, or to galvanize the public into boycotting the products of manufacturers who put too many factories overseas while exporting less from the United States.

Strikes work when union membership is high enough to encourage the public to support the strikers, or at least feel a kinship with them. My parents, who lived comfortably on my father’s earnings as a textile broker in New York, never crossed a picket line thrown up by a labor union in pursuit of a favorable contract. They might not have agreed with a union’s demands, or even known what they were. But they respected a strike as an often-necessary tool in reaching a compromise acceptable to both sides.
...
The street demonstrations and marches so characteristic of today’s resistance can be immensely meaningful, but they don’t force the sort of permanent economic change that a union can achieve through a binding contract that emerges from a strike.

Or at least they haven’t yet. Perhaps in time new organizations will emerge — heirs to the old union movement — and one of their priorities will be to pressure manufacturers quite publicly to put more of their factories in the United States.

- Alex McKeen reports on a needed push for labour market indicators which recognize the reality of gig work and other forms of precarity. Julia Horowitz points out that WalMart represents a particularly egregious example of inequality between executives and workers. Chris Parsons offers a reminder that one of the greatest threats to free speech is employer suppression of workers' views - particularly where they involve asserting rights in the workplace. And UFCW points out one recent Alberta example of an employer's anti-union tactics leading to a remedial certification.

- Daniel Tencer examines the assumptions behind the sticker price of a basic income, and notes that the savings in social costs could make a secure income into a bargain for everybody.

- Marc Lee highlights the full cost-benefit analysis which shows a Trans Mountain expansion to be a poor deal for everybody but its corporate operators. And Tzeporah Berman writes about the importance of protest movements in ensuring that the people excluded from the Libs' decision-making are still able to influence the course of events.

- Finally, Brent Patterson reminds us of a few of Justin Trudeau's most important broken promises.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Robert Costanza reviews Mariana Mazzucato's The Value of Everything, and highlights its focus on attaching proper importance to priorities that aren't reflected in prices:

(T)he current mainstream ‘marginalist’ concept bases value on market exchanges: price, as revealed by the interaction of supply and demand in markets, determines value, and the only things that have value are those that fetch a price.

This has major implications for ideas about the distinction between value creation and value extraction, the nature of unearned income (‘rent’) and how value should be distributed. As Mazzucato notes, it stokes inequality because the market, simply by generating income, is seen to justify its level and distribution: “All income, according to this logic, is earned income: gone is any analysis of activities in terms of whether they are productive or unproductive.”

Mazzucato lays out disturbing implications of the marginalist approach. These include (mis)measuring national income and real wealth, confusing financial speculation with the production of value, perverting the patent system (which stifles, rather than rewards, innovation) and undervaluing government and public goods, including public infrastructure, ecosystems and social networks. Her engaging and insightful exploration reveals how embedded the marginalist approach has become, and how it distorts economies’ ability to foster innovation, equity and real progress.
...
Economics has been defined as the use of scarce resources to achieve desirable ends. In the Anthropocene epoch of human influence on the planet, we need to redefine those ends, and reevaluate which resources are truly scarce. Value should be viewed as contribution to the sustainable well-being of Earth and all its inhabitants...Mazzucato’s trenchant analysis is a compelling call to reinvent value as a key concept to help us achieve the world we all want. 

- Meanwhile, in a prime example of how reality is being warped to achieve surface financial goals, Matthew McClearn discusses how Ontario's Libs are condemning citizens to decades of avoidable interest payments in order to avoid answering for the costs of power privatization.

- Richard Florida examines the role housing prices play in the growth of inequality.

- Howard Mann views the Trudeau Libs' determination to put the resource sector and its foreign profiteers ahead of the public interest through backroom deals as a hallmark of third-world governance. Andrew Nikiforuk takes a look at the Enron roots of Kinder Morgan, the latest beneficiary of the Libs' largesse. And Ralph Surette offers kudos to John Horgan's NDP for being able to tell the difference between the "national interest" and the profit motive of the fossil fuel sector.

- Finally, Isabella Lovin discusses the need for countries to not only reach their modest climate change commitments in the short term, but to reach net zero carbon emissions in a matter of decades to avert a climate catastrophe.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Denise Balkissoon writes about the importance of ensuring a just transition for fossil fuel workers - rather than using their jobs as bargaining chips to preserve oil industry profits. And Andrea Olive, Emily Eaton and Randy Besco point out that there's plenty of public support for carbon pricing and other elements of a strong climate change policy in Saskatchewan.

- Meanwhile, Nick Falvo offers a list of takeaways from the Moe government's first provincial budget - including multiple choices which will make life even more precarious for people facing poverty and precarity:

6. Social assistance benefit levels in Saskatchewan remain very low. For example, a single employable adult on social assistance in Saskatchewan receives approximately $9,000 annually on which to live (and pay rent). A person with a disability gets between $12,000 and $16,000 annually, depending on the severity of the disability. Every year, the value of inflation erodes the value of these benefits. (All of these figures can be found here.) 

7. This budget announced the phasing out of a rental housing benefit for low-income households. The Saskatchewan Rental Housing Supplement provided some additional rent money for low-income households with either children or a disability; but this budget announced that no new applications will be accepted as of July 1. The provincial government expects this will save the provincial treasury $5 million in the first year (or 0.03% of the total budget). Without the rent supplement in place, I believe it’s likely we’ll see more people becoming homeless in Saskatchewan, which itself comes with added costs to the public treasury. 

8. The budget’s decision to extend the PST to used car sales may disproportionately impact low-income households. The budget removes the PST tax exemption on (light) used car sales, which may translate into almost $100 million in new annual revenue. This will make it slightly more expensive to purchase a used car in Saskatchewan. The budget also restores the trade-in allowance when determining the PST—so, when a car owner is trading in a vehicle, they will only pay the PST on the difference in price of the trade in and the selling price for the vehicle they’re buying. 

9. The budget fails to address on-reserve child poverty. According to Census data, Saskatchewan’s on-reserve rate of child poverty (as measured by the After Tax Low Income Measure) is nearly 70%, second highest in the country after Manitoba. Neither this year’s budget nor last year’s takes meaningful steps towards addressing that.

- Heather Stewart reports on UK Labour's push for genuinely affordable housing - rather than stretching the term to fit homes priced far beyond people's means.

- Michael Geist discusses the dangers of allowing - and even encouraging - corporate giants to monitor and control online content. And Murad Hemmadi talks to Charlie Angus about Facebook's influence over public policy (even as it fails to register to lobby government).

- Finally, Ruth Dreifuss and Richard Elliott make the case for the decriminalization of personal drug use and possession in order to reduce the social harms arising out of prohibition.