Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Robert Reich laments the indecency of gross inequality (and the economic policies designed to exacerbate it):

(F)or more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy adult. Or even for a middle-class child to become wealthy.

The major reason is widening inequality. The longer the ladder, the harder the climb. America is now more unequal that it’s been for eighty or more years, with the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of all developed nations. Equal opportunity has become a pipe dream.

Rather than respond with policies to reverse the trend and get us back on the road to equal opportunity and widely-shared prosperity, we’ve spent much of the last three decades doing the opposite.
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(T)he underlying issue is a moral one: What do we owe one another as members of the same society?

Conservatives answer that question by saying it’s a matter of personal choice – of charitable works, philanthropy, and individual acts of kindness joined in “a thousand points of light.”

But that leaves out what we could and should seek to accomplish together as a society. It neglects the organization of our economy, and its social consequences. It minimizes the potential role of democracy in determining the rules of the game, as well as the corruption of democracy by big money. It overlooks our strivings for social justice.

In short, it ducks the meaning of a decent society.

- And Ian Welsh points out that an economy built around unnecessary scarcity only facilitates negative outcomes in both absolute and relative terms:

We, in the West, live in scarcity economies.  The key bottleneck resources are scarce, and the decision has been made to keep them scarce.  Our entire economic policy from about 1979 can be summarized as follows: ordinary people cannot be allowed to have a real raise which translates into spending on oil.
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When you live in a scarcity society, it’s almost impossible to receive permission to do anything real, and you have to put up with how your boss treats you, unless you have a very in-demand skillset, because the next job isn’t a sure thing.  Infrastructure isn’t maintained, new institutions aren’t built, and every old institution tries to create a rental stream (thus the huge increases in tuition and the huge decreases in grants.)  You can’t build high-speed rail, heck you can’t even maintain the freeways properly.  Bridges start collapsing, and so on.

This isn’t just about resource shortages.  A resource shortage may start the sequence, but it is the deliberate refusal to deal with the resource shortage which turns it from a challenge into an era, which turns a rich society into a scarcity society.

- Meanwhile, Alison's latest Dilbit takes a look at the lack of thinking behind the NEB's Gateway approval. And David Suzuki points out the lunacy of approving a pipeline based on future research to figure out exactly what harm it figures to cause:

"Spills will happen, there is no question about that," the Vancouver-based broadcaster and scientist told The Vancouver Sun. "The question, is what do you do about it?"
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Among the panel's 209 conditions recommended Thursday, Enbridge should: research programs into oil-spill cleanup and the varying physical and chemical properties of the oil intended to be shipped, including studies into dispersion and remediation; conduct pre-operations emergency response exercises and develop an emergency preparedness and response exercise and training program.

"It's absurd to say we have to do state-of-the-art research and all that after the pipeline is allowed to go through," Suzuki continued. "There is no known technology that can clean up the mess once it occurs. They can't sop up most of the oil; it's simply dispersed into the atmosphere, water or land."

- Finally, both Andrew Coyne and Stephen Maher discuss the Supreme Court's ruling striking several Criminal Code provisions related to prostitution.

Musical interlude

Athenaeum - Flat Tire

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Don Lenihan is the latest to highlight the difference between citizens and consumers - as well as why we should want to act as the former:

In the old view, public debate is all about defining the public interest by establishing collective needs. This requires a very different view of public debate. Rather than seeing it as a chance to advance my wants, it asks me, as a citizen, to consider the needs of the community. This means I must listen to others, weigh their claims, examine the evidence, and make trade-offs and compromises.

When Delacourt talks about citizens having once had a sense of the common good or being willing to make sacrifices for it, we don’t need to believe there was once a golden age of civic participation to agree with her.

The real point is that, not so long ago, citizens had a much clearer sense of their responsibility—as citizens—to balance their personal wants against the public good. Rob Ford’s proclivity to treat citizens first and foremost as taxpayers—and Ford Nation’s inclination to respond—shows just how far we have strayed from this vision.

- Andrew Leach offers his take on what the National Energy Board's rubber-stamping of Northern Gateway means. And Stephen Hume points out the absurdity of the Cons' carefully-scripted process.

- Meanwhile, having managed to eliminate environmental considerations from the Gateway's environmental review process, Stephen Harper has once again kicked any possible greenhouse gas emission regulations past the next federal election. That may break the streak of consecutive "next year!" promises before it reaches an even ten - but it also seems to leave no room for any pretense that a Con government will ever regulate the oil sector.

- Andrew Jackson calls out the Cons' doublespeak on the affordability of a secure pension system. And John Geddes identifies Stephen Harper's pension rhetoric as yet another example of the Cons' beggar-thy-neighbour, every-man-for-himself philosophy.

- Finally, CAUT finds that a strong majority of Canadians both support and recognize the need for unions - while only the predictable 28% would rather see unions and workers silenced.

Reconciliation fail

Shorter Joe Oliver:

We Conservatives are so committed to building trust and relationships with First Nations, we feel we can safely ignore a report saying we're failing miserably on all fronts and instead claim all the necessary work is done. So who wants to partner up with us?

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ed Broadbent comments on Parliament's review of inequality in Canada:

In a more encouraging vein, the majority report cautiously endorses some positive proposals. Given stated support from both of the opposition parties, these could, and should, move to the top of the government agenda as we approach the 2014 federal Budget and the 2015 federal election.

The Broadbent Institute and other witnesses highlighted the need to increase the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) which supplements the incomes of working poor families, thus raising earned income from low wage jobs and helping offset unnecessary barriers to moving from welfare to work.

The majority report calls on the federal government to “formally review the WITB to determine how it could be expanded or modified to further benefit Canadians.”

The majority report, again accompanied by stronger statements from the opposition parties, further calls on the federal government “to make early childhood education and child care more accessible and affordable in all areas of the country, including through increased support for affordable early childhood and education and care programs.”

Such programs are key to removing barriers to work by single parents, mainly women, and are also important to expanding lifetime opportunities for low income children. However, the key question to ask of the Conservatives is whether they are actually prepared to fund income supports for the working poor and early childhood programs. After all, their stated priorities, following elimination of the deficit, are to cut income taxes by introducing family income splitting and by raising contribution limits for Tax Free Savings Accounts.

- Meanwhile, Martin Regg Cohn notes that Jim Flaherty is standing in the way of a secure retirement for a substantial number of Canadians while being able to look forward to multiple political pensions himself.  And Lawrence Martin looks at Peter Kent's brief stay as a Harper cabinet member - but finds that Kent himself is far more critical of the media than of the government which ignored his own recommendations.

- Dene Moore reports on the imminent release of the NEB's Northern Gateway review. But I'll offer a reminder of the reality which has largely been edited out of coverage of the NEB's hearings: rather than representing a "yea or nay" evaluation, the entire process was set up by the Cons to prohibit a "nay" conclusion.

- Frances Russell discusses the spread of low-paying work in the service sector - with a particular focus on how some employers are going out of their way to force workers to work multiple McJobs rather than receiving overtime or benefits through a single workplace.

- Finally, Heather Mallick points out the importance of tax revenue to build a functional society:

I am a tax eccentric. I like taxes and frequently rejoice at what they give me: highways, air traffic control, emergency rooms, the tracking of the emerald ash borer, abortion rights, traffic lights, schools, food safety, the RCMP’s terrific boots, policing, regulating, licensing, autopsies, compassion, all the things that make us an organized and rational nation that is a pleasure to live in. I don’t trip over small corpses on the way home. It’s rather nice.

Conservatives, on the other hand, enjoy these services while abusing taxes as the necrotizing flesh disease of Canadian life.
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(T)axing is more complicated than that, as essayist Jim Stanford says. “Governments decide, in the context of the conflicting and contradictory political pressures they face, what programs they will provide. Then they figure out how to fund those programs.”

Neo-liberals cut taxes first, Stanford says, while the programs exist, thus creating a deficit that is used to justify further cuts. We are manipulated. For example, we are told that we can’t afford pensions. Neither can we raise payroll taxes to raise CPP benefits for the future.

But we can pay them if we choose to.

New column day

Here, on how James Moore's disinclination to care about his neighbours is par for the course from the Harper Cons - and how we should learn the lesson about caring and compassion that Moore and his party are so studiously avoiding.

For further reading...
- Again, Sara Norman's original story is here, while PressProgress and Laura Payton both helped to put it in context.
- My recap of Moore's other events from the week is drawn from his activity in Monday's Hansard, as well as his office's most recent statements as of the time the column was written.
- Thomas Walkom highlights the Cons' general antipathy toward the idea of social responsibility. And Andrew Coyne tries to stand up for Moore - though I don't see how a word of his defence would apply with any less force to Ebenezer Scrooge if one was motivated to treat "are there no prisons? are there no workhouses?" as an appeal to alternate means of palliating poverty.
- Finally, Bill Tieleman looks at the facts about child poverty in Canada.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Scott Doherty recognizes that Saskatchewan's failure to collect a reasonable royalty rate for potash and other natural resources is directly responsible for the province crying poor when workers are laid off. And Alex Himelfarb points out that the magical theory behind perpetual tax cuts is purely a matter of illusion rather than reality.

We are more than just consumers and taxpayers. We are citizens with responsibilities for one another; we undertake to do some things together, things that we could never do alone or that we can do much better collectively. Taxes are the way we pay for those things. They’re the price of living in Canada and the opportunities that provides.  Indeed, those opportunities exist because of the sacrifices and taxes of previous generations to build the Canada we inherited.
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We demand of our leaders to explain how they are going to pay for new services but, equally, we need to demand that they explain the COSTS of their promised tax cuts ­–­­­ to our quality of life, to our democracy, to our economy.  Would we be so pleased with the next tax cuts if we knew they came with worsening traffic congestion, increased risks to food safety, longer wait times for health care, less help for the jobless and needy, rising inequality and environmental degradation?

We seem only to talk about what government costs and not about what it gives.  Too much is at stake to let our identities as “consumers” and “taxpayers” supplant our citizenship and commitment to the common good.

- Meanwhile, the Star Phoenix discusses Station 20 West - which has become a source of food, health services and community for Saskatoon's Pleasant Hill neighbourhood despite the best efforts of the Wall government to stop it.

- And on the subject of governments with absolutely no clue about the realities facing people living in poverty, Peter MacKay believes that even homeless people should have no trouble whatsoever selling some unspecified property to pay mandatory fines.

- Armine Yalnizyan questions the rationale behind the Cons' cuts to Canada Post. And Duncan Cameron expands on the postal bank option as an alternative to the Cons' slash-and-burn approach.

- Finally, Elizabeth Thompson describes Hugh Segal's philosophy of political bridge-building - which of course couldn't be much more out of place in the current Conservative Party.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Lined-up cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Tieleman tears into James Moore for his callous disregard for child hunger, while PressProgress reminds us that plenty of the Cons' policy choices reflect Moore's complete lack of concern for his neighbours' children. And Polly Toynbee looks in detail at the UK Cons' attempts to turn support for needy children into a perceived political weakness rather than a matter of basic empathy and compassion:

The dirty war has begun; the early signs are that this will be the most poisonous, socially damaging election campaign for many a long year. Corrosive malice will be poured over anyone on any benefit. The Conservatives are convinced they are laying a killer trap by branding Labour as "the welfare party".
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The language used by Zahawi captures a swelling theme of the election – dividing the "taxpayer" from the "benefit taker" – with this: "Many couples take the decision to delay having a third or fourth child until they are sure they can afford it." The comments that followed were heavily anti-child: "If you can't afford kids why expect the state to keep them?" and "It's a parent's responsibility to provide, not the government". There lies the great dividing line: why should the state support children at all?

As the Child Poverty Action Group eloquently argues, benefits for children not only spread the cost of living between richer and poorer, but also smooth the bumps in everyone's life cycle. When children are born costs are highest and earnings meagre, but later many will earn more, pay more tax and get less out. The banal moral truth is that children are the future, paying for the care of the childless. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this government's legacy will be a steep rise in child poverty by 2015: a monumental £12bn benefit cut is in George Osborne's post-2015 plan.
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Cameron bets the screw can be turned twice as hard, as Osborne enters the election with huge cuts to meet his impossible deficit targets. Labour has no intention of matching his plan. The only way to avoid the Tory "trap" is to tell the truth of where incomes are heading, how child poverty is soaring. Rachel Reeves lays out her policy for the first time in January. Ed Miliband has already said he'd shrink the housing benefit bill by building homes, and the dole with guaranteed jobs for the unemployed and a living wage to ease the cost of tax credits. Labour can never out-nasty the Tories, so nice is the only way to be.

- Elizabeth Benzetti highlights the absurdity of wealthy and privileged scions of the right like Conrad Black and Rob Ford putting on a "woe is us!" routine while calling for life to be worse for mere ordinary citizens. And Andrew Coyne similarly laments the infantilism and lack of principle which form the basis of the right in Canada - though he's too quick to try to distance that impulse from conservative politics.

- Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the state of minimum wage laws in Canada - with not a single jurisdiction providing for the minimum wage above the poverty line. Andrew Jackson takes a look at the composition of Canada's workforce and notes that a majority of workers may have trouble reaching what would generally be seen as a middle class lifestyle. And the Globe and Mail rightly slams Jim Flaherty for positioning himself as the primary obstacle barring the way to a sufficient Canada Pension Plan.

- David McLaren comments on the Cons' decision to restore a colonial philosophy to Canada's foreign policy. And John Baird's spin on the Cons' international priorities is accurate only to the extent that their sole concern is with profits rather than jobs.

- Finally, Sandra Azocar and Noel Somerville take a look at Alberta's experience to make the case against for-profit seniors care:

The inconvenient reality is that, because of acute staff shortages, seniors are not being fed properly and medications are not being administered properly.

The magnitude of the current staffing problem has been well documented in a recent study done by the Parkland Institute. This study, entitled From Bad to Worse — Residential Elder Care in Alberta, demonstrates the deterioration that has occurred in Alberta from 1999 to 2009.

The Parkland study quantifies the differences in care provided in public, not-for-profit and private for-profit facilities. The hours of care per patient in not-for-profit facilities was 83 per cent of that provided in publicly operated facilities. The hours of care per patient in private for-profit facilities was only 71 per cent of that provided in the publicly operated facilities.
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(T)he availability of long-term care beds in Alberta, relative to the age 75-plus population, has slipped by 20 per cent and is now the second lowest of any Canadian province. This decline is on top of the 40 per cent cut in long-term care beds per capita that occurred in the 1990s. Further, over the study period, the number of assisted living beds which provide much lower level of care, has grown by 187 per cent.

All of these realities suggest that the government is pursuing a continuing care strategy that serves to divest itself of responsibility for providing care to seniors. When it comes to expanding seniors care in this province, this government has opted to give massive public handouts primarily to corporations seeking to profit from the health needs of seniors.

Ironically, Premier Alison Redford won the Tory leadership race in large part by claiming to be devoted to our public health-care system. Yet this government continues its ideologically driven efforts to shift costs and responsibility from the government to individual health care users and to promote increased private-sector participation. Sadly, this is why we are now more than ever hearing heartbreaking stories from seniors and their families that attest to the shabby state of elderly care in our province.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Heather Mallick discusses what Canada stands to lose as Canada Post is made both more expensive and less functional. Ethan Cox suggests that what's missing from Canada Post is a postal bank - which makes postal services elsewhere both more profitable, and more valuable for citizens. And the Star points out that the Cons have stood idly by while allowing the institution to fall apart.

- But then, post offices are the least of what the Cons have gone out of their way to portray as beneath them - as made clear by James Moore's rightfully-skewered declaration that he doesn't see why he should care about - or do anything to help - hungry children. 

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman reminds us why inequality matters both economically and politically:

It’s now widely accepted that rising household debt helped set the stage for our economic crisis; this debt surge coincided with rising inequality, and the two are probably related (although the case isn’t ironclad). After the crisis struck, the continuing shift of income away from the middle class toward a small elite was a drag on consumer demand, so that inequality is linked to both the economic crisis and the weakness of the recovery that followed.

In my view, however, the really crucial role of inequality in economic calamity has been political.

In the years before the crisis, there was a remarkable bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of financial deregulation — a consensus justified by neither theory nor history. When crisis struck, there was a rush to rescue the banks. But as soon as that was done, a new consensus emerged, one that involved turning away from job creation and focusing on the alleged threat from budget deficits.

What do the pre- and postcrisis consensuses have in common? Both were economically destructive: Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth.

...

Surveys of the very wealthy have, however, shown that they — unlike the general public — consider budget deficits a crucial issue and favor big cuts in safety-net programs. And sure enough, those elite priorities took over our policy discourse.

 Which brings me to my final point. Underlying some of the backlash against inequality talk, I believe, is the desire of some pundits to depoliticize our economic discourse, to make it technocratic and nonpartisan. But that’s a pipe dream. Even on what may look like purely technocratic issues, class and inequality end up shaping — and distorting — the debate.

So the president was right. Inequality is, indeed, the defining challenge of our time. Will we do anything to meet that challenge?

- And Michael Valpy discusses the plight of the precariat who have been so deliberately excluded from the Cons' political calculations (other than as a source of cheap labour for their corporate benefactors).

- Fortunately, the continued efforts of the Cons and their provincial counterparts to silence the general public are only giving rise to more creative ways to influence the shape of our society. On that front, Lloyd Maybaum suggests that employees who have been arbitrarily denied the right to strike should focus their efforts and their dollars on the political system. And Ashley Renders reports on Unifor's steps to include workers who can't organize through traditional workplace union structures.

- Finally, Mariana Mazzucato makes the case for governments to serve as generators and incubators of big ideas, rather than pools of funding to be exploited for corporate benefit:

(T)he point of public policy is to make big things happen that would not have happened anyway. To do this, big budgets are not enough: big thinking and big brains are key.

While economists usually talk about things that are not done at all (or done inadequately) by the private sector as "public goods", investments in "big" public goods like the UK national health service, or the investments that led to new technologies behind putting a "man on the moon", required even more than fixing the "public good" problem. They required the willingness and ability to dream up big "missions". The current narrative we are being sold about the state as a "meddler" in capitalism is putting not only these missions under threat, but even more narrowly defined public goods.

Public goods are goods whose benefits are spread so widely that it is hard for business to profit from them (or stop others profiting from them). So they don't attract private investment. Examples include transport infrastructure, healthcare, research and education.

Even if you're an avid free-marketeer you can't avoid benefiting, directly and indirectly, from such public investments. You gain directly through the roads you drive down, the rules and policing which ensure their safety, the BBC radio you listen to, schools and universities that train the doctors and pilots you depend on, parks, theatre, films and museums that nurture our national identity. You also gain, indirectly, through enormous public subsidies without which private schools, hospitals and utility providers would never be able to deliver affordably and still make a profit. These are conferred as tax breaks, and provision of vital skills and infrastructure at state expense.
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The public sector must produce public goods, and through the creation of new missions catalyse investment by the private sector – inspiring and supporting it to enter in high-risk areas it would not normally approach. To do so it requires the ability to attract top expertise – to "pick" broadly defined directions, as IT and internet were picked in the past, and "green" should be picked in the future. Some investments will win, some will fail. Indeed, Obama's recent $500m guaranteed loan to a solar company Solyndra failed, while the same investment in Tesla's electric motor won big time – making Elon Musk richer.

But as long as we admit the state is a risk-taking courageous investor in the areas the private sector avoids, it should increase its courage by earning back a reward for such successes, which can fund not only the (inevitable) losses but also the next round of investments. Instead, calling it names for the losses, ignoring the wins, and outsourcing the competence and capabilities, is ridding it of the courage, ability and brains to create the missions, hence opportunities, of the future. And without brains, all government will be able to do is not make big things happen but simply serve a private sector that is concerned only with serving itself.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Joan Walsh discusses how employers are exploiting the U.S.' wage supplement policies by taking the opportunity to severely underpay their employees - resulting in both insecure income and employment, and significant public expense to reduce the poverty suffered by full-time workers. And Lana Payne comments that the Cons' anti-worker policies figure to further exacerbate inequality in Canada as well.

- Meanwhile, lest anybody doubt the disproportionate effect of corporate power in politics, Juliet Eilperin writes that the Obama White House delayed the introduction of health, safety and environmental regulations until after the 2012 election cycle to avoid controversy - and still hasn't caught up on the backlog.

- Martin Regg Cohn writes that the Canada Pension Plan needs shoring up now. But Chris Hall reports that the Harper Cons loom as one of the most important obstacles to agreement on a more secure retirement system.

- In the same vein, the Cons are once again showing their disdain for immigrant families by severely restricting the circumstances in which it's possible to sponsor a parent or grandparent. And they're seemingly planning to pull the rug out from under Canadians who rely on social housing.

- Thomas Walkom points out how the Cons' attacks on Canada Post seem designed to avoid important decisions about underfunded pensions. And Susan Delacourt speculates about the political effect of making mail less accessible and affordable:

The more that people refuse to answer their phones or come to their doors when a politician calls, the more the parties have had to find other ways to know their voters.

The parties have been buying magazine subscription lists, for example, to find out what interests the people inside those homes. But will these subscriptions themselves become relics, when magazines, like the mail, no longer arrive on the doorstep?

What about the direct mail fundraising that has been such a source of small, individual contributions to political parties? Will those postcard-format appeals for dollars even make it from the community mailbox into voters’ homes?

People are still letting the outside world into their homes, but now the main route of entry is through a screen — whether on a television, computer or smartphone.

The milkbox is no longer the portal into suburban homes. Soon the mailbox, the place to deposit letters, bills and newspapers, will join it as a museum artifact.

Can the politician on the doorstep be far behind?

- Finally, Andrew Coyne comments on the Cons' culture of secrecy:

If the Senate scandal has had such legs, then, it is because so much of the behaviour it describes, the secrecy and deception and control from the top, has been everywhere replicated in the government’s handling of the fallout. What began as a secret deal to buy a senator’s silence has progressed through several additional layers of deception: the bogus story about Senator Mike Duffy repaying his own bogus expenses, papered over with a bogus money trail; the tampering with the Deloitte audit; the whitewashing of the Senate committee report; the series of ever more preposterous stories, after the story broke, about what Senator Duffy and Nigel Wright were up to, and whether they were fine, upstanding public servants or misguided patriots or deceitful criminals; the denials of involvement or knowledge, including to the police, by several of the principals, in direct conflict with the known facts; the mysterious mass deletion of emails by Benjamin Perrin, who may or may not have been the prime minister’s lawyer, followed by their even more mysterious discovery; the stonewalling and evasions throughout. I may have missed a stage, but I believe we are now at the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.
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As ever, we are confronted with the utter inability of our democratic institutions to hold those in power to account. Nor is this confined to the Senate mess. Debates in Parliament are now routinely cut short by “time allocation.” Committees now routinely meet in camera. The Parliamentary Budget Office is reduced to filing access to information requests for the departmental data to which it is statutorily entitled. The list goes on.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Paul Krugman highlights why inequality is indeed an issue which demands action - both for its own sake, and for its impact on other goals such as economic sustainability. And Bill Moyers discusses the difference between a government responsive to its people and one completely controlled by elites:

The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. "The abuse of buying and selling votes," he wrote of Rome, "crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors."
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Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through. It is simply astonishing that in this rich nation more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits, while our financial class pockets record profits, spends lavishly on campaigns to secure a political order that serves its own interests, and demands that our political class push for further austerity. Meanwhile, roughly 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty line and, with the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percent of kids in poverty than we do. Yet a study by scholars at Northwestern University and Vanderbilt finds little support among the wealthiest Americans for policy reforms to reduce income inequality.
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I should make it clear that I don't harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy. Remember, I worked for Lyndon Johnson. Nor do I romanticize "the people." You should read my mail and posts on right-wing websites. I understand the politician in Texas who said of the state legislature, "If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents."

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

 - Andrew Sullivan makes a similar point in commenting on the impact of Pope Francis' discussion of market zealotry (h/t to Cathie):

(T)he way in which market capitalism has become a good in itself on the American right is, well, perniciously wrong. As soon as a system ceases to be a means to a human good, and becomes an end in itself, it has become a false idol. Perhaps the apotheosis of that idol worship was the belief – brandished on the degenerate right in the past decade or two – that markets are self-regulating. Of course they’re not, as Adam Smith would have been the first to inform you. Another assumption embedded on the American right is that more wealth is always a good thing. The Church must say no. This is a lie. Wealth is a neutral thing above a certain basic level of non-drudgery. Above that, it can be an absolutely evil, deceptive thing, distorting human souls, warping their dignity, vulgarizing their character. An American right that worships at the altar of both free markets and material wealth, and that takes these two idols as their primary goods, is not just non-Catholic. It is anathema to Catholicism and to the Gospels.

- Michael Valpy writes about the connection between extractive economics, inequality and social exclusion - while observing that those exact factors are serving to reinforce each other in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Matthew Hays offers a devastating look at how Canada is beginning to look from abroad - with Rob Ford serving only as the most prominent example of a crude, selfish and thoughtless persona. And Scott Reid points out the systematic elimination of any sense of shame from right-wing politics as a substantial part of the problem.

- Finally, John Geddes writes that the Cons' patently absurd attacks on improvements to the Canada Pension Plan are making it needlessly difficult to discuss how to ensure retirement security for Canadians. And Tammy Schirle and Kevin Milligan offer their own proposal to bolster the CPP.

On status quo proposals

Shorter Doug Saunders:

I'm suspicious of the role of mere members in shaping party policy. And also of the role rogue MPs might play in shaping decision-making. In fact, what we need is a completely centralized system of government where the prime minister can implement his preferred policies on a whim without giving a damn what party members or MPs think. If only we could hope for such a distant ideal...

Musical interlude

Sloan - If It Feels Good Do It

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Bob Hepburn writes that more Canadians approve of the idea of a guaranteed annual income than oppose it - even as the concept is all too frequently dismissed as politically unpalatable. And Stuart Trew points out that a majority of Canadians disagree with the corporate super-rights contained in the CETA and other trade agreements.

- But of course, blind support for corporate interests and opposition to a reasonable standard of living for all are neatly clustered in the Cons' caucus among other places. And Carol Goar writes that Con MPs used a Parliamentary study of inequality as yet another platform to parrot Stephen Harper's anti-social talking points.

- Nick Fillmore's Tyee series on Canadian banks is well worth a read - particularly the latest installment discussing how the U.S. financial model (which is of course seeping across the border) gives priority to derivatives over the banking functions which actually serve some useful purpose for the real economy.

- pogge politely suggests that if CSEC's current Con-appointed watchdog sees his job as countering public reporting of surveillance activities (rather than investigating the accuracy of those reports), then maybe it's time for a real watchdog.

- Finally, Vanda Schmokel writes about the developing pattern of mid-winter apartment evictions in Regina. And the Evict Scrooge campaign is calling attention to both the plight of the residents losing their homes when they can least afford it, and the general lack of accessible rental housing.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom points to Ontario's experience with Kellogg's as yet another example of the dangers of basing economic policy on blind faith that handouts to big business will benefit workers and the general public:

Like Kellogg, the auto companies justify their apparent double-dealing by citing the need to boost profits.

Indeed, in market terms, their actions are perfectly rational.

Why not take whatever you can from governments when subsidies are on offer? And why not stiff those same governments if, later on, you can make more by operating elsewhere?

For governments, however, open-ended corporate subsidies are not as rational.

From Massey-Ferguson to Kellogg, Ontario governments have sunk money into companies that either couldn’t or wouldn’t maintain employment in the province.

What are the alternatives? One is to do nothing and let the free market work its destructive magic. As Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is finding out, and as Stephen Harper has already discovered, this is politically untenable.

The other is to insist on having government, or even workers themselves, play a role in managing publicly subsidized companies.

- CUPW identifies what's at stake as the Cons encourage Canada Post to make its service less useful and more expensive, while Chantal Hebert points out that the government responsible is nowhere to be found in answering for the eliminate of door-to-door delivery and a massive price increase. And Alexandre Boulerice already has a petition in place to stop the service cuts.

- Kady O'Malley rightly criticizes the do-nothing fall session of Parliament - though it's worth pointing out which party both delayed the start of the session and held a majority which was wielded to stop nearly anything from getting done. And Alison singles out for shaming the Cons' Ethics Committee members who refused to allow an investigation into the Cons' Senate cover-up, and also went in camera to avoid any public committee votes on the issue.

- But of course, if we want a functional Parliament, it's probably incumbent on advocates for change to show they have some respect for the institution and its underlying purposes. Which means that Justin Trudeau's excuses that he'd rather be a full-time campaigner than an MP likely point in the wrong direction.

- Finally, Gloria Galloway reports on Don Drummond's conclusion that even equal funding won't be enough to allow First Nations schools to meet the standards expected by Canadians in general. But the real need for more should at least provide an impetus to move toward closing the gap which currently sees First Nations schools grossly underfunded (while federal and provincial governments point fingers at each other rather than doing anything to address the problem).

New column day

Here, on how Michael Chong's Reform Act privileges members of Parliament over party members and supporters - and how there's far more reason for concern about a lack of genuine grassroots input as matters stand now than about the influence of MPs.

For further reading...
- I'll point to Andrew Coyne passim as the main cheerleader for the Reform Act. I refer in the column to some of the points made by Alice Funke and Don Lenihan. And Aaron Wherry surveys a few more responses - including Jeff Jedras' proposal for a standardized primary system (which would seem to set up exactly the neutrally-administered party membership lists needed to support a membership-based review mechanism).
- And on the question of how our federal parties handle leadership reviews by membership, the NDP, Conservative and Liberal constitutions are available in PDF form. And while the former provides for a leadership review vote "(a)t every convention that is not a leadership convention" (section 3(a)(v)), the latter two each rule out any leadership reviews except after a general election (sections 10.7 and 71(1), respectively).

[Edit: added link.]

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jim Stanford reminds us that even Statistics Canada's already-galling numbers showing increased inequality in Canada understate the problem, as they fail to reflect capital gains (and the preferential tax treatment thereof):

Yesterday’s release from Statistics Canada on the income share of the wealthy generated some interesting coverage and commentary.  It reported that the top 1%’s share of total income in Canada remained steady in 2011 in Canada, at 10.6 percent — but still significantly higher than in the 1980s.

Most observers did not mention, however, that this oft-cited income share statistic does NOT include capital gains in the calculation of incomes and income shares.  A capital gain, of course, is a realized benefit resulting from the disposition of an asset (buy low, sell high … unless you are a short seller, in which case you should buy high and sell low!).
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Wealthy people are not just wealthy.  They are the major owners and top managers of the profit-driven businesses which are the major driving force of our economy.  This gives them a power, and a vested interest, that goes beyond their claim to a vastly disproportionate share of incomes.  And in turn, that power helps to explain why THEIR incomes receive such favourable taxation treatment, and other government favours.

- Thomas McGarity writes that Barack Obama's much-needed discussion of inequality left out a crucial point about the need for regulation to rein in the excesses of the market.

- Les Whittington comments on the Cons' shredding of Canada's social safety net. And Thomas Walkom points out that the opposition parties - including the NDP in particular - should be making clear how to strengthen the safety net to account for a job market built around precarious employment.

- This week in accountability, Con MPs are publicly insisting that they should be able to get away with illegal activity simply by concealing the facts then running another election campaign. CBC follows up on tax avoidance by the chair of the Royal Canadian Mint (and close associate of Jim Flaherty) by revealing an agreement to hide the activity from the Canada Revenue Agency. And Kady O'Malley reports on a new form of lifetime confidentiality agreement being foisted on MPs' staff - with the NDP's staff union serving as the only group questioning the blanket of secrecy.

- Finally, Don Lenihan wonders what a greater level of speed and complexity in policy-making means for representative government. And Sean Holman writes that shifting a bit of nominal power toward MPs may not substantially improve the level of public involvement in politics:

(I)t’s conceivable party leaders would have to take better account of the views expressed by MPs during the private meetings where much the public’s business is discussed.

...(I)t’s conceivable MPs may be emboldened to publicly break ranks when they disagree with their party or its leader — confident their chances of being expelled from caucus or not being able to run for their party in the next election have been reduced.

But all this is predicated on the willingness of MPs to resist the rewards of conformity, the penalties for dissent and a culture of deference.

After all, being expelled from caucus or barred from a party candidacy are just two of many punishments that can be inflicted on rebellious MPs.

And party leaders will continue to be able to check that rebelliousness by holding forth the lure of political promotion.

As such, while I strongly support the intent of Chong’s bill, I worry that legislation may, at best, just entrench and empower the private debating clubs that are party caucuses — doing little to show Canadians that representation is being done.

And if representation isn’t seen to be done, how do we know it’s even taking place?

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Contained cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- In the course of grading Canada's job market, Kayle Hatt traces the rise of precarious employment in both absolute and relative numbers - and notes that other countries haven't seen the same type of move toward temporary employment encouraged by the Cons. And in a similar vein, Duncan Cameron rightly brands the Cons as the "bad jobs party".

- Meanwhile, the lack of stability in any single job makes it all the more important to ensure that Canada's retirement system provides for security even among workers who have been pushed from employer to employer. And both the Globe and Mail and the Star Phoenix lend their support to the NDP's push to expand the CPP as the best way of reaching that goal - with the latter editorial nicely summing up the difference between public and private options:

There is another flaw in the pooled accounts plan. While the CPP has relatively low administration fees because of its size, the greater the number of pooled plans the more that is bled off in such fees. That puts less money in the hands of retirees and more money into the bonuses of wealthy bankers. The federal government's argument that increasing CPP premiums will cost jobs is predicated on the ideological belief that any tax discourages investment. In fact, keeping seniors out of poverty is more likely to create jobs than providing more tax breaks at a time when doing so is already threatening Canada's social union.

- And Amanda Lang surveys just a few examples of how the same markets which are praised as a means of mass wealth creation are in fact rigged to divert any gains toward the top.

- George Monbiot is the latest to discuss how excessive materialism leads to far less personal well-being:

There has long been a correlation observed between materialism, a lack of empathy and engagement with others, and unhappiness. But research conducted over the past few years seems to show causation. For example, a series of studies published in the journal Motivation and Emotion in July showed that as people become more materialistic, their wellbeing (good relationships, autonomy, sense of purpose and the rest) diminishes. As they become less materialistic, it rises.
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I should emphasise that this is not about differences between rich and poor: the poor can be as susceptible to materialism as the rich. It is a general social affliction, visited upon us by government policy, corporate strategy, the collapse of communities and civic life, and our acquiescence in a system that is eating us from the inside out.

This is the dreadful mistake we are making: allowing ourselves to believe that having more money and more stuff enhances our wellbeing, a belief possessed not only by those poor deluded people in the pictures, but by almost every member of almost every government. Worldly ambition, material aspiration, perpetual growth: these are a formula for mass unhappiness.

- And finally, Michael Harris documents what he describes as Stephen Harper's annus horribilis. But while it would be a plus for less of the damage to be inflicted on Canada as a whole, we should ensure there are worse political times ahead for Harper and his party.