Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Eli Wolfe discusses new research confirming how unions have saved thousands of workers' lives - and how workers stand to pay the price for political attempts to undermine collective action:

The new study focuses in particular on the extent to which state “right to work” laws — which barred mandatory union dues for non-union members even before Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling — translate into more workplace deaths. Using mathematical modeling techniques, the study found that the rate of job-related deaths among U.S. workers from 1992 through 2016 was 14.2 percent higher than it would have been if union membership had not been undercut by right to work laws.

That equated to roughly 7,300 extra workplace deaths over the 25-year period, according to author of the analysis, Michael Zoorob.
...

There is a small but growing body of research highlighting the health benefits of unions. Zoorob’s study cited a 2016 report in the American Journal of Public Health that union contacts provide, among other benefits, protections against workplace hazards.

“The overarching point is that unions are important in workplace protections, and the fact that they’re declining because of public policies like right to work is concerning,” he added.

- Alastair Sharp and Dylan Waisman explore the integration of oil giants and other business interests into Canada's national security apparatus - and the resulting infiltration of activist groups for corporate benefit. And John Hua notes in contrast that under the Libs, British Columbia gaming regulators and security officers were ordered not to investigate loan sharking and other systemic illegal activity. 

- Meanwhile, Jessie Hellmann reports on Novartis' special position as the author of the U.S.' new rules on drug pricing while funneling money to Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen.

- Finally, Gary Mason discusses the deceit behind the Clark Libs' attempt to cling to power. And Don Braid points out how Doug Ford's immediate campaign of destruction offers a preview as to what Alberta can expect if it allows Jason Kenney to take control of its government.

Musical interlude

The Supermen Lovers feat. Mani Hoffman - Starlight

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Ed Finn offers a reminder that Canada's social safety net is leading to the perpetuation of poverty despite ample resources to end it. And Niall McCarthy discusses the worsening state of financial inequality across the developed world.

- Hadrian Metrins-Kirkwood points out that enhanced sick leave under Employment Insurance would result in an affordable benefit to people who need it.

- Robert Reich reviews new books by Annie Lowrey and Andrew Yang on the value of a basic income, but recognizes the importance of dealing with inequality all along the income spectrum:

A U.B.I. might give recipients a bit more time to pursue socially beneficial activities, like helping the elderly or attending to kids with special needs or perhaps even starting a new business. Yang suggests it would spur a system of “social credits” in which people trade their spare time by performing various helpful tasks for one another. (I.R.S. be warned.) Surely a U.B.I. would help compensate many people — especially women — for the unpaid labor they already contribute. As Lowrey points out, some 40 million family caregivers in America provide half a trillion dollars of unpaid adult care annually. Child care has become so expensive that one of every three stay-at-home mothers today lives below the poverty line (compared with 14 percent in 1970).
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Whatever the source of funds, it seems a safe bet that increased automation will allow the economy to continue to grow, making a U.B.I. more affordable. A U.B.I. would itself generate more consumer spending, stimulating additional economic activity. And less poverty would mean less crime, incarceration and other social costs associated with deprivation. “You know what’s really expensive?” Yang asks. “Dysfunction. Revolution.”
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A core challenge in the future will be how to redistribute money from the ever richer owners of the robots and related technologies to the rest of us, who are otherwise likely to become poorer and less secure. This is not just an economic challenge but also a political one. As we know from recent history, vast fortunes translate directly into political power, and such power effectively resists redistribution.

- Lucas Laursen reports that in contrast to the consistent failure of Canada as a whole or any of its provinces to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets (or even develop a plausible plan to do so), California is now ahead of schedule in reducing its emissions while thriving economically.

- Finally, Martin Regg Cohn writes about the price Ontario stands to pay for Doug Ford's anti-tax dogma.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Joel French discusses the need to move beyond merely preserving the public institutions Alberta has now, and to start building the new ones which will be needed in the future.

- But Eric Levitz observes that the U.S. is instead taking deliberate policy steps to ensure that workers don't benefit from nominal economic growth. And Douglas Rushkoff writes that the long-term plan of the capital class is to detach itself from the rest of humanity rather than working toward common benefits - while noting the futility of that worldview:

This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.
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(W)hen the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

- Susan Dynarski discusses new research confirming the role unions play in the sharing of income and wealth. And Lana Payne highlights how the Trudeau Libs have traded away the possibility of stronger labour policy in order to enrich businesses through the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- Finally, Leilani Farha points out how the corporate sector is capturing the housing desperately needed by residents of larger cities around the world. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Oliver Moore reports on Greyhound's elimination of most of its Western Canadian bus service. Emily Riddle offers a reminder that the lack of transportation puts Indigenous women and other marginalized people at risk. And Simon Enoch highlights the obvious need for Saskatchewan to resume operating a public rural bus service.

- The Globe and Mail feigns shock at the revelation that Doug Ford is in fact Doug Ford, while Tom Parkin documents the fiscal crisis Ford is deliberately creating. And Andray Domise appropriately labels Ford's rule-by-antagonism - though it's worth noting that the under the typical right-wing faux-populist model, deliberate attacks on perceived enemies serve largely to distract from the greater goal of looting the public treasury for the benefit of cronies.

- Joel Lexchin examines the large amounts of money spent by big pharma to try to influence Canadian health care providers - and the lack of much means for the public to track the results of that investment.

- Scott Sinclair makes the case for Canada to protect its supply management system from the demands of U.S. agribusiness giants.

- Finally, Michelle Chen writes about a push for New York City to set up a public bank to ensure all of its residents have access to needed financial services. And Maddy Savage points out how Norway's responsible and socially-minded management of resource wealth has made it one of the few developed countries where younger workers are able to live comfortably.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Sleepy cats.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Lisa Gennetian discusses how behavioural economics can inform the development of programs to end child poverty - including by ensuring a guaranteed income to help parents avoid needless financial stress. And Annie Lowrey makes the case for a basic income as a matter of freedom from an intrusive state apparatus focused on stripping away contingent benefits.

- Jedediah Purdy comments on the increasing salience of class issues in the U.S. as the Trump administration hands over policy-making authority to big business. And Andrew Jacobs reports on Trump's use of the U.S.' foreign influence to attack breast-feeding in order to benefit corporations looking to peddle breast milk substitutes.

- Ryan Cooper points out that an attempt to sell out the corporate sector has proven politically toxic for U.S. Democrats - and suggests developing policy for the 99% whose votes will prove decisive, rather than the .01% willing to pour exorbitant amounts of money into conditional donations.

- Tom Parkin writes that Canada has lost out from the Libs' failure to keep the infrastructure promises that were so central in the 2015 federal election. 

- Finally, Andrew Coyne rightly points out that nearly the entire argument being used against proportional representation involves the entirely arbitrary choice to set the proper number of representatives for each group of voters at only one.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Ed Finn writes that we shouldn't believe claims that Canada lacks money for social benefits when Lib and Con governments have deliberately chosen not to bring in the revenue needed to fund them:

Canadian governments back in the 1960s and ‘70s never asked where the money was coming from when they launched our public health care system, the Canada Pension Plan, unemployment insurance, and other social programs. These programs were at their peak in 1975, when the country’s per capita GDP was just $7,489.94.

Making historical comparisons is complicated by having to take the effects of inflation, exchange rates, and other variable factors into account; but it’s safe to infer that the per capita income generated by Canada’s economy today -- in constant U.S. dollars -- is almost as twice as high as it was in the 1970s.

Why, then, are we still being told by our political leaders that Canada cannot afford to enhance or even maintain the social benefits we somehow managed to fund with far less national income four decades ago? 
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Clearly the cause of Canada’s purported “shortage” of funds for social spending does not derive from a revenue shortfall, but from a heartless maldistribution of revenue. The decision to tolerate inexcusably steep rates of poverty and homelessness; the refusal to expand medicare to cover drugs, dental and vision care; to provide cost-free child care and tuition-free higher education; to improve public pensions and other social programs -- all these decisions have been matters of choice, not necessity.
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So the answer to the recurring “where’s the money coming from?“ question is that it comes mainly from Canada’s working people. Millions of low-income tax payers are being denied better social and economic conditions because their governments have misspent their tax payments while reducing tax rates for the rich. That’s what gives our political leaders the contrived excuse that they can’t afford further social spending.

How much larger would the contents of their financial coffers be if they maintained an honest and equitable tax system? If they fairly taxed wealthy individuals and profitable corporations? If they stopped lavishing corporations with tax exemptions and subsidies? If they imposed and collected taxes on the enormous amounts of money stashed in foreign tax havens? (The tax haven haul alone would increase federal revenue by at least $10 billion a year -- and by as much as $47 billion, according to Conference Board of Canada estimates.)

A federal government truly committed to serving the public interest instead of powerful corporations and the wealthy elite would stop depriving itself of the much greater financial assets it could legitimately acquire.

- Catherine Bosley and Fergal O'Brien take note of the lack of wage growth even in what's supposed to be a tight U.S. labour market. And Noah Smith discusses the impact new automation figures to have on the working class - and the importance of a strong social safety net to make sure advances in technology don't leave a large number of people worse off.

- Nora Loreto comments on the connection between Canada's settler-state mentality and the perpetuation of racial disparities. And David Climenhaga points out that the rhetoric around the defence of property pushed by Alberta's UCP (among other right-wing parties) is intended to echo the U.S.' dangerous "stand your ground" laws.

- Finally, Anita Khanna, Sid Frankel, Martha Friendly and Peter Bleyer discuss Canada's embarrassing failure to make a meaningful dent in child poverty in three decades after Parliament unanimously agreed to eradicate it - as well as what needs to be included in an effective plan to fight poverty at last.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jon Stone reports on Jeremy Corbyn's message to progressive parties that voters have had enough of being told there is no alternative to austerity and corporatism:

On a visit to the Netherlands on Thursday the Labour leader said socialists and social democrats risked looking like another part of the establishment by “supporting a failed economic system rigged for the wealthy”.

He warned that “fake populists and migrant-baiters of the far-right” would benefit from the demise of the centre-left, which had in the past “delivered enormous advances for working people” but was now losing ground.
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“In election after election, voters have shown they simply don’t believe many of these parties offer real change. After a decade of austerity following the bankers’ crisis, years of stagnating living standards and rising insecurity, working class communities in particular are simply not prepared to accept more of the same,” Mr Corbyn said at an event organised by the Dutch Labour Party in the Hague.

“My message for our European sister parties is simple: reject austerity or face rejection by voters. If our parties look like just another part of the establishment, supporting a failed economic system rigged for the wealthy and the corporate elite, they will be rejected – and the fake populists and migrant-baiters of the far right will fill the gap.”

- Noah Smith offers a reminder of the crucial role unions have played in giving workers a voice in the community at large as well as in the workplace. And Leo Gerard discusses how billionaires are pushing to undermine the U.S.' public-sector unions by recruiting or hiring stand-ins to encourage people to contribute nothing to their collective bargaining mechanisms. 

- Travis Lupick writes about new research showing that mental health care for homeless people produces few lasting outcomes unless it's paired with housing. And Seth Klein and Iglika Ivanova offer their recommendations to make housing more available and affordable in general - including both better protections against landlord abuses, and more direct public investment in providing homes for the people who need them.

- Finally, Brent Patterson compares the severe punishments being threatened against activists with the laughable excuses for any consequences to Kinder Morgan for deliberately preventing fish from spawning and otherwise harming the environment in the name of pipelines. 

Musical interlude

Big Wreck - You Don't Even Know

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Martin Regg Cohn writes that reducing access to pharmacare is just the first item on Doug Ford's extensive hidden agenda. And Steve Morgan examines the effects of Ford's cuts to public prescription drug coverage and finds that the end result of relying more on the private sector will be added costs borne disproportionately by the middle class.

- David Climenhaga points out that the funding for Canada's anti-tax propaganda mills includes the donation-laundering mechanisms used by American billionaires.

- Corey Shefman recognizes that the disproportionate concentration of Indigenous people in jails should be considered a national crisis. And Max Fineday notes that the gap is only getting worse for the new generation of Indigenous youth.

- Lana Borenstein highlights why Scott Moe's crusade against greenhouse gas emission pricing is likely doomed to fail.  And Marc Lee offers a reminder of the massive public subsidies behind British Columbia's liquid natural gas industry (among other fossil fuel development).

- Finally, Claire Cain Miller explores the factors behind the choice of younger Americans to have fewer children, and finds that a lack of affordable child care is at the top of the list.

New column day

Here, on how the Justice for our Stolen Children movement should spur Saskatchewan to action toward reconciliation - but is instead being met with a government determined to silence anybody who even suggests we need to do better.

For further reading...
- CBC reported on both the issues raised by the Wascana Park activists, and the government's response demanding that protestors show "good faith" by allowing themselves to be silenced.
- Emily Blake reports on how people are dying unnecessarily due to racial bias in the health care system in Northern Canada - which echoes the discriminatory treatment of Indigenous patients in Saskatchewan.
- Justine Hunter offers a reminder that many of the families being torn apart due to "neglect" are in fact primarily lacking the same money which governments are more than willing to spend placing children elsewhere.
- And the CP reports on the failings of the federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, which is steadily losing staff concerned with government interference.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- David Callahan writes about the U.S.' billionaire-dominated political system - and why nobody should be satisfied merely with having an ideologically-agreeable set of tycoons buying elections:

Depending on your politics, you may either cheer or fear the influence spending of specific top donors. In truth, we should be troubled about all such spending. Thanks to several factors, economic inequality seems to be translating into civic disparities at a faster pace and in ways that touch more parts of US society.
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The new money flowing from wealthy left-of-center donors, especially in response to Trump’s rise, may look like a sign that American pluralism is alive and well in this second Gilded Age. Yes, public life in increasingly drenched in cash, but aren’t many viewpoints getting heard as a more ideologically diverse upper class supports various causes and candidates?

Sometimes this is the case. On climate change, for example, progressive donors have helped counter the longstading might of the fossil fuel industry. Economic issues have been another story, though. Polls show that the wealthy are more conservative on such issues, which explains why very little money even from left-of-center donors goes to support work that strongly challenges inequality. Bloomberg’s big give for Democrats this year is a case in point: he’s made it clear that he wants to support moderate candidates, not populists from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
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Ultimately, the best solution to the new civic inequality lies in stronger social movements that convert Americans from spectators to activists. And one of the most reassuring trends of recent years is we’ve seen a lot of such people power, including the Tea Party, Occupy, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.

Now we need more of the same, extending to more issues and more places – especially the core challenge of economic inequality. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how the United States can escape from a new era of plutocracy.

- Lindsay Wiginton and Sara Hastings-Simon point out what Ontario stands to lose if Doug Ford guts its climate change policies. And Jessica Corbett discusses Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' ambitious environmentalism as reflecting what's needed to ensure both a strong economy and a healthy planet.  

- The New York Times' editorial board writes that consumers will end up paying far more in interest on mounting credit card debt to fund the Trump giveaway to the wealthy.

- The Saskatchewan Herald highlights the billions in health infrastructure deficits left behind by Brad Wall even as he blew through the products of a boom and increased the provincial debt. And Canadian Glen interviews Joel French about the costs of Alberta's choice not to collect readily-available revenue including through a sales tax.

- Finally, Tom Parkin notes that Justin Trudeau's broken progressive promises figure to leave ample room for the federal NDP to win over swing voters in 2019.

Wednesday Night Cat Blogging

Surrounded cats.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Richard Partington reports on new OECD data showing that wages are continuing to soar for the lucky few in the developed world while stagnating for everybody else, as well as on the Rowntree Foundation's observation that single-income families in the UK have fallen far below an acceptable standard of living. Federico Diez and Daneil Leigh chart the connection between corporate concentration and the exploitation of workers and consumers. And Steph Sterling and Marshall Steinbaum examine how the Trump Republicans' tax giveaway to the rich will only make matters worse in the U.S.

- Meanwhile, David Dayen examines how California tax policy was taken hostage by soda companies - who threatened to push a referendum effectively barring municipalities from setting their own revenue policies to unless they were singled out for exemption from taxes which were proving effective both to raise revenue and improve public health. 

- Linda Stamato points out how the Trump administration is making housing even less affordable for the people who need it most. And Sadiq Khan and Ada Colau recognize the importance of treating housing as a right which must be provided to everybody, rather than a profit stream to be withheld where it serves the cause of further enriching owners.

- Stuart Trew offers a preview as to how Doug Ford's "value for money" rhetoric serves purely as a pretense to slash public services.

- Finally, Richard Denniss and Fergus Green point out the economic futility of undermining any climate change policy by pouring public money into pipelines.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- James Galbraith reminds us of the danger extreme inequality poses to any social bonds - and the need for political action to counteract the current momentum toward further concentration of wealth:

Controlling inequality—like controlling blood pressure—is good for your economic health. Economies with less inequality generally have lower unemployment and stronger productivity growth, and some researchers also claim better human health and social cohesion. In terms of the rest of the world, the peculiar organization of the United States into a boom/bust economy based on finance and high technology is the exception rather than the rule: We combine record-breaking inequality with low unemployment. But this is a formula that generates massive instability, as well as the resentments that gave us President Trump. Countries with stronger stabilizing institutions built on the principle of countervailing power may be less rich over the short term, but they are better-governed and built to last.
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The US government, in short, needs to break away from the grip of concentrated financial power and from the illusions of dominance that come with feeling exceptional, invincible, and rich. Financial power has an interest in instability at home and abroad. It has an interest in seeking to dominate what can no longer be dominated. It is therefore a vector for depredation and for conflict, neither of which we can afford—especially in an era of existential risks to the environment, through climate change, and to the future of life on the planet, through nuclear war.

Ultimately, therefore, this is a political struggle. “Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power,” notes Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. And Thomas Hobbes was right; anyone who observes the US political scene knows this, as does anyone who participates in American politics. In the end, inequality—both in the United States and around the world—is a problem that can only have a political solution.

- Robert Kuttner argues that the Trump Republicans' giveaway to their obscenely wealthy donors should be the central issue of the U.S.' midterm elections. And Peter Whoriskey discusses how the monetization of poverty by a predatory financial sector is only making inequality all the worse.

- Martin Sandbu explores the idea of a jobs guarantee, but argues that it's a less desirable alternative to a basic income which would ensure that personal financial security isn't tied to work alone. And Bernadette Meaden discusses the UK Cons' shameful determination to take any source of support away from some of the people who need it most.

- Finally, Roger Noll and Robert Litan respond to Donald Trump's attack on supply management by pointing out the false claims behind it.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Sam Pizzigati makes the case for an effective maximum wage - and notes that the U.S.' historical top tax brackets were based on the recognition that excessive top-end income can have harmful effects for everybody:

In 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, FDR asked Congress for a 100% top tax rate that would leave no individuals with more than $25,000 of annual income – about $375,000 today – after taxes.

America’s top unions backed FDR’s plan – and so, Gallup pollsters reported, did a clear plurality of Americans. Congress felt the heat. By 1944, America’s richest faced a 94% tax rate on income over $200,000. Our top tax rate hovered around 90% for the next two decades, a span of time that saw the United States give birth to the world’s first mass middle class.

America in those years became significantly more equal. By 1970, the 1%’s share had sunk to a tenth of the nation’s income, versus a quarter in 1928. The bottom 90%’s share had jumped to two-thirds.
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The maximum wage is an idea whose time has come. I think most Americans would agree that no enterprise where workers would have to labor over a century to make what their CEOs can make in a year should get a single one of our tax dollars.

- Michelle Goldberg notes that millennial voters are embracing democratic socialism. And Dylan Scott points out that the U.S. Democrats (and other parties seeking progressive votes) can accomplish far more by embracing popular progressive ideas than by tilting to the neoliberal centre.

- Suzi Weissman interviews David Graeber about the rise of bullshit jobs - along with the path forward to try to reduce workers' reliance on socially pointless or counterproductive employment to stay afloat.

- Finally, Kathleen Belton highlights some of the steps we can take to reduce the amount of plastic we dump into our environment.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Alex Ballingall reports on the efforts of the United Nations' special rapporteur on housing Leilani Farha to push for an enforceable right to housing - and the Libs' predictable demurral in favour of vague aspirational statements. And Jen St. Denis points out that the next step in British Columbia's investigation into Lib-supported casino money laundering will be a review of its impact on the real estate market.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports that one of the first actions of Doug Ford's anti-social government has been to stop the hiring of employment standards officers to protect the wages and working conditions of Ontario workers.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford examines the effect of Australia's reduction in Sunday and holiday pay in the retail and hospitality sectors, and finds that any promise that it would lead to more jobs has proven entirely illusory.

- Chris Dillow discusses the tendency of the neoliberal centre to exacerbate power imbalances based on the hope that their side will continue to exercise it, rather than recognizing the importance of collective action.

- Finally, Michael Harris offers a warning about Stephen Harper's attempt to sell Canada out to the Trump administration.

Musical interlude

Phantogram - As Far As I Can See

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress highlights the Canada Revenue Agency's long-overdue estimate of the public costs of offshore tax evasion, as well as other new data on the money being withheld through corporate tax non-compliance:

On Thursday, Canada’s tax collection agency published its first ever estimate of the international tax gap, revealing wealthy Canadians are evading up to $3 billion in tax every year through offshore tax havens.

The CRA estimates the amount of money wealthy Canadians are stashing offshore could range between $75.9 billion and $240.5 billion.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, CBC News obtained internal CRA documents that suggests Canada is losing more than $22 billion per year to corporate tax dodgers.

Together, corporate tax dodgers and wealthy elites are now costing Canada at least $25 billion every year – that alone would cover the costs of a national pharmacare plan, introduce a national child care program and cut poverty in Canada in half.

- Meanwhile, Rob Shaw comments on the B.C. Libs' eager facilitation of money laundering through casinos - including by repeatedly shutting down law enforcement investigating the problem. 

- David Macdonald studies the radically inconsistent availability of child care across Canada, including "deserts" where there's no reliable expectation of being able to find care. And CBC notes that most children in Saskatchewan's major cities are trapped in those deserts.

- Michael Tutton reports on a new federal study discussing the massive steps needed to deal with our current rate of climate change.

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan responds to the corporatist attempt to destroy supply management by pointing out that the only alternative is putting ourselves at the mercy of heavily-subsidized U.S. agribusiness giants.