Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Jason Hickel challenges the spin that poverty and inequality are being meaningfully reduced around the world as our global economy is currently structured. Sarah Marsh reports on the reemergence of "Dickensian diseases" as a result of cuts to social supports in the UK. And Richard Reeves discusses how maternal depression (caused by poverty among other factors) serves as a barrier to social mobility.

- Meanwhile, Chuck Collins highlights how a wealth tax could simultaneously provide the U.S. with both a massive infusion of needed public resources, and a necessary rebalancing of political power.

- Gary Mason discusses how systematic money laundering may be even more prevalent in Canada than previously known. And Mathieu Galarneau examines our dubious position of paying more to telecoms for mobile data than any other country on the planet - though it's again worth noting that the provinces with public-sector options represent exceptions to the national pattern.

- Courtney Carlberg and Jen Budney examine Saskatchewan's woeful standing in Canada when it comes to child care. And Angela Brown reports on Ryan Meili's needed push for a mental health strategy - including both a greater focus on the causes of mental illness, and the availability of treatment for people who need it.

- Finally, Lana Payne calls out the focus of right-wing governments on punishing perceived enemies rather than serving the public.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Edward Luce writes about the reckless greed of the U.S.' billionaire class which includes far too many people willing to see Donald Trump re-elected as the price of avoiding paying a fair share toward a civilized society. And Noah Smith compares a wealth tax to other alternatives in the effort to restore some sense of fairness and justice to the U.S.

- Meanwhile, David Macdonald studies the effect of exorbitant executive pay, and finds that it bears no meaningful positive relationship to stock performance:

It’s far more likely that, like so many traditions, old boys’ clubs die hard. Evidence that higher numbers of female executives produce better corporate results are just not sinking in.

Well, it turns out the same can be said for the evidence about excessive pay for CEOs, whatever their gender. Paying your CEO more has no relation to your company’s stock market performance. In fact, it could be worsening it.
...
...(T)here is statistically no relationship between executive pay and company stock price in Canada over this period. Put another way, other factors explain 99.8% of variations in executive pay. So, you can pay your execs more, but this will either have no effect on your share price or possibly it will drive the price down, not up.

And yet executive pay has been rising far faster than worker wages for decades, partly to buy the better stock performance that it clearly doesn’t buy. Moreover, all this bonus pay seems to flow to male and not female executives, driving the key component of the executive gender pay gap.

Power, not merit, is driving income and gender pay gaps.

- Political Potshots offers a reminder of the secretive funding structure behind Canada's right-wing astroturf groups.

- David Ljunggren and Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the Libs' plans to discard any possibility of universal pharmacare in favour of a scheme designed to cater to pharmaceutical corporations.

- George Monbiot discusses the environmental disaster being dumped onto less wealthy countries - and particularly the UK's practice of sending tires to India to be burned with no regard for the resulting health implications.

- Finally, Naomi Lakritz implores Albertans not to let Jason Kenney drag the province back to Ralph Klein's austerian governing agenda.

Musical interlude

Now, Now - SGL

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Both Eric Levitz and Brian Beutler write that U.S. Democrats need to highlight and fight the class war being waged by the rich, rather than shying away from the real and justified anger it provokes among insecure workers. And Robert Benzie reports on the latest research from the Financial Accountability Office showing that low-income Ontarians are facing income stagnation.

- Karl-Petter Thorwaldson explains how inequality is contributing to both a climate breakdown, and an inability to address it through politics as usual. And Jessica Clogg responds to the attempt by foreign-funded corporate oil lobbyists to demonize Canadian environmentalists.

- The Pembina Institute responds to yesterday's decision of the Supreme Court of Canada upholding the effectiveness of provincial environmental law by pointing out the need to make effective use of that constitutional jurisdiction. And John Paul Tasker's report on the Libs' overpayment for the Trans Mountain pipeline reminds us how many public resources are still being wasted catering to the fossil fuel industry.

- David Climenhaga discusses a new Parkland Institute study (PDF) showing that NDP governments are more effective than alternatives in managing public health care, but also indicating that they too need to be more ambitious in providing resources for public health.

- Finally, PressProgress highlights a new CUPE study (PDF) into the corporate takeover of Canada's universities.

Say No to Bubble Boy

There are already more than enough galling stories circulating in Alberta's political scene to emphasize why Jason Kenney and his party are grossly unfit to exercise any power. But it's worth pointing out one more problem which matches the combination of deeply-rooted corruption and austerian disregard for the public good as a disqualifying factor.

Let's start with this story - which has mostly been discussed for the back-and-forth between Kenney and Rachel Notley on the issue of public service cuts, but which also contains this nugget:

In his speech Saturday, Kenney said that oil and gas had been a major driver of innovation in the Alberta. He argued that the province's economy has diversified in part because of, not in spite of, the energy industry.
...He said the energy industry could help bring cryptocurrency technology to Alberta. The computers used in the large-scale mining of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, require vast amounts of energy.

"Cryptocurrency could well be the backbone of the future digital economy. It depends on low-cost energy and we can provide that with our abundant hydrocarbon energy," he said.

And that's been followed up in turn with Kenney's call to eliminate any viability tests for Alberta real estate purchases as part of a general insistence on slashing public protections.

Which is to say that in a province too long defined by a dependence on resource bubbles as a substitute for any sustainable economic strategy, Kenney is bent on inflating more and worse if he gets the chance.
 
Even as Alberta wrestles with the long-term costs arising out of an oil industry which has refused to clean up its own messes, Kenney is pushing an industry whose sole purpose is to convert environmental destruction into captured wealth - and whose reliance on speculation in the absence of any substantive product makes regular busts an inevitable result.

And even after playing a role in government in the midst of the damage wrought by reckless mortgage lending which inflated both house prices and the risks assumed by people who ultimately couldn't afford them, Kenney wants to inflict exactly the same harm on Alberta.

So in addition to combining the worst elements of the PCs' entitlement and Wildrose's reactionary exclusion, Kenney also intends to tie the well-being of Alberta's citizens to the most reckless available forms of casino capitalism. And if voters choose to take such a foolish bet, the repercussions look to be felt far outside Alberta's borders.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Chris Hedges points out how the obscenely rich few are trying to distract from their accumulation of wealth in order to avoid what would stand to be a massive public backlash. Emily Peck discusses the question of why our economic system is set up to allow the concentration of billions of dollars in single individuals. And Bill McKibben writes about the importance of perseverance against entrenched interests in fighting for a just transition toward cleaner energy.

- Meanwhile, Marc Lee calls for expanded public transit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve accessibility and mobility for the people who need it most.

- Sebastien Jilke and Wouter Van Dooren comment on the dangers of trying to deliver veterans' benefits (and other public services) through privatized models which emphasize corporate profits over recipients' best interests.

- Nick Saul discusses how poverty is the most important barrier to healthy eating.

- Finally, Andre Picard weighs in on the need for improved public access to data in Canada, with particular emphasis on its importance in shaping health outcomes.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Upturned cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Josh Mound opines that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' call for a 70 per cent tax rate on ultra-high incomes is just the beginning of a needed conversation about the morality of the extreme concentration of wealth. And Vanessa Williamson writes that beyond raising public revenue, we should also value the improvement in equality generated by a more progressive tax system:

Progressive taxation should work as a corrective tax, like tobacco taxes or a carbon tax. Sure, tobacco taxes raise some revenue for the states. But their primary purpose is to curb smoking. While a carbon tax could produce a lot of government revenue, the real point is to limit global warming pollution. In essence, corrective taxes try to put themselves out of business; if tobacco tax revenues decline because people quit smoking, or if carbon taxes stop rolling in because the economy becomes fossil-free, that is victory, not defeat.

Taxes on the wealthy discourage a different societal ill: exploitative capitalism. Progressive tax policy is a powerful corrective to economic inequality and wealth concentration. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez concluded in their seminal paper on U.S. income inequality, “steep progressive income and estate taxation” helped prevent the accumulation of immense fortunes in the middle of the 20th century. In cross-national data, moreover, there is a “strong negative correlation between top tax rates and top 1% income share.” In other words, where top tax rates are higher, the income distribution is more egalitarian – not just post-tax, but even before taxes are taken out.

That’s because progressive taxes blunt the incentives for wealthy people to overpay one another and exploit the less privileged. For instance, contemporary CEOs are often financially rewarded for what is in essence good luck: changes in market conditions that have nothing to do with their individual performance. High tax rates discourage these CEO windfalls, leaving more money available for companies to invest productively. That means higher marginal tax rates make the economy fairer and more productive — and have no negative effect on growth, no matter what billionaires at the World Economic Forum prefer to believe.
...
Early proponents of progressive tax policy knew that it was not just a revenue source. In our contemporary Gilded Age, and as our political institutions feel pushed to the breaking point, we would do well to remember that progressive taxation is a democratic reform.

- Meanwhile, Liz McCormick, Saleha Mohsin and Alexandre Tanzi report on the U.S.' trillion-dollar borrowing to fund the Trump tax giveaway to the rich. And Richard Partington writes that the UK's corporate tax handouts have likewise proven far more harmful to the public treasury than promised.

- Oscar Guardiola-Rivera highlights why the corporate-driven push for a coup in Venezuela is dangerous for all concerned. But Joshua Goodman, Luis Alonso Lugo and Rob Gillies report that Canada has been at the centre of a secret push to install an unelected leader in order to facilitate resource-sector profit-taking.

- Chris Tollefson reviews three books documenting how Canada's petro-state is blocking climate progress. And Elizabeth Aguilera points out how environmental damage is inflicted on people who can't afford to leave polluted areas due to structural inequalities.

- Finally, Eric Andrew-Gee and Tavia Grant examine some of the gaps in publicly-available data about Canada and its citizens.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Bess Levin comments on the self-serving attempts of the Davos class to shut down any call for progressive taxes. And Keith Brooks points out the absurdity of a PR campaign on behalf of a largely foreign-owned fossil fuel sector attempting to vilify environmental activists for not stopping their connections at national borders.

- Brendan Maton discusses Stephanie Kelton's call for governments to invest in a balanced society rather than obsessing solely over their own balance sheets. And Roderick Benns examines how Ontario's small basic income project allowed people to seek out basic health care which had otherwise been unaffordable.

- Ben Beckett writes about the vital role played by U.S. federal workers in ending the government shutdown.

- CBC News reports on a renewed push for drinking water to be fluoridated - with provinces stepping in if necessary to ensure it happens.

- Finally, Jason Wilson talks to David Niewert about the dangers of the U.S.' increasingly bigoted and reactionary right wing.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the belated recognition among the world's most privileged few that they can't but their way out of the fundamental issues facing humankind. And Branko Milanovic highlights the Davos set's lip service to combating inequality as long as it does nothing to affect the imbalances in their favour.

- The London School of Economics points out Jonathan Mijs' work on the connection between social divisions and relative popular acceptance of inequality. And Polly Toynbee writes about the right's exploitation of that link:

Both rich and poor delude themselves that they are ordinary. But telling people the facts doesn’t change their attitudes: increasingly they cling to a moral belief that people rise by merit, sinking for lack of it. Spend time talking to people using food banks or in Citizens Advice offices knocked down by benefit sanctions, and too often you hear people absorbing the blame. “I should have tried harder at school,” is a frequent refrain, as if no other forces were at play. Talk to the mega-rich – I once conducted focus groups of earners up to £10m – and they are wilfully ignorant about their super-privilege, unshakable in believing their superior merit.

The right captured the story, the emotions, the moral framing: social democrats need to seize it back with a narrative of immorality that is more compelling. The British Social Attitudes survey suggests a swing back towards empathy with the swelling numbers of poor people – including more than 4 million children. But still inheritance tax remains the most reviled of all taxes. The right forever tries to prove poor people are more stupid by nature than the rich, but Professor Steve Jones, a celebrated geneticist, when asked about the heritability of intelligence, replies deftly that the most important heritable trait, by miles, is wealth.

- David Sirota interviews Anand Giridharadas about the pitfalls of relying on elite philanthropy rather than democratic decision-making.

- The Australia Institute examines how tax giveaways to businesses accomplish nothing. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy discusses how a wealth tax can and should work south of the border.

- Finally, Sammy Hudes reports on a report prepared for Calgary's city council showing how the privatization of public services creates massive new risks to the public while only benefiting the corporations who are able to extract profits.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Ploy Achakulwisat writes about the health emergencies emanating from an ongoing climate breakdown. And Andy Kroll points out that even in the U.S., a concerted effort of corporate spinmeisters and anti-environment politicians hasn't been able to override the public's concern about climate change.

- Meanwhile, Mike de Souza exposes the National Energy Board's deliberate deletion of documents which would otherwise have proven embarrassing - showing once again how a regulator which is supposed to act in the public interest has instead flouted the law to serve the interests of the fossil fuel sector. Robyn Allan writes that Justin Trudeau and other enablers of unsustainable dependence on dirty energy are wilfully ignoring where our future society and economy are headed. And Owen Jones calls out the UK's willingness to hand massive amounts of money to the oil and gas sector while demanding that low-income individuals fend for themselves. 

- Jennifer Morgan and Sharan Burrow write about the need to combat both climate change and inequality. But while they try to make the case that the main task is to convince the Davos set to care about the planet and the majority of humanity, Shawn Gude interviews Evelyne Huber about the need for workers to drive democratic change. And George Monbiot examines the role of community spaces in creating the possibility of meaningful transformation.

- Barry Ritholtz discusses the latest research confirm that increased minimum wages tend to lift lower incomes without having any negative effect on the availability of work.

- Finally, Laura Macdonald and Nadia Ibrahim highlight how the abandoned promises surrounding the new iteration of NAFTA include the suggestion that a trade deal could reduce gender inequality rather than exacerbating it.

Musical interlude

College - A Real Hero

New column day

Here, on how the new Canada Food Guide points the way toward a far healthier food system - but falls far short of actually propelling us toward the end goal.

For further reading...
- Leslie Beck approves of the new food guide's focus on scientific evidence, while Andre Picard points out its failure to address issues of inequality which affect the availability of nutritious food for the people who need it most. The Canadian Press noted the difference in a food guide which isn't aimed at serving the meat and dairy industries. And Jake Edmiston reports on the industry replies referenced in the column.
- Again, Ronald Quaroni reported on the majority of Saskatchewan and Manitoba households on the brink of insolvency, while the Canadian Press examined the similarly alarming numbers nationally. 
- And finally, Andrea Janus reported on Second Harvest's review of food waste in Canada.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the lessons the Canadian progressive movement should take from the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in shaping the U.S.' political discourse:

What is so crucial to Ocasio-Cortez’s potential—as well as the sheer hatred she inspires among the right—is the simple fact that she acknowledges the class conflict inherent within a capitalist society. She wants to build a broad coalition, to be sure, but she knows that it will never include the very wealthiest, and so—unlike many Democrats—she isn’t bothering with the political charade. This is why—over the tut-tutting of much of the pundit class—she has proposed a 70% top marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, a plan which, however unpopular with the 1%, is supported by the broad electorate. Likewise, her Green New Deal is a bold attempt to wed an impending climate crisis to a capitalist system with undemocratic and chaotic forms of production and distribution. In her view, the masses of regular people must assert their democratic priorities over the rich and their unearned wealth. If this is class conflict, than Ocasio-Cortez seems perfectly willing to embrace the branding and run with it.
...
The lesson in my view is clear. The elites will never back a concerted push to build a just, equal, and democratic economy, and no amount of niceties and respectability will get them to: they must be defeated through a determined political effort that unites the many against the few.
...
It must be put clearly that class conflict is a reality in this country, too; that the economic elite have never supported the CCF-NDP, and they never will; and that we’ll be branded as class-warriors and socialists no matter what our policies, however ambitious or modest. We need to embrace the image we have, and not be ashamed of it. We need to take the progressive policies already on our books, and put them front-and-centre. We need to stand with allies like Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, who are fighting similar fights, and we need to show Canadians that when push comes to shove, we have a vision for this country which is different than what they’ll get from the Conservatives, Liberals, and Greens. Certainly, when it comes to recent attacks on the right to strike and bargain collectively, the NDP has been workers’ only consistent ally, but we need to not only play defence, but go on the attack for the society we want to build. And if the cats get grumpy, and cry class warfare? Let them. After all, what’s wrong with battling every day to make the lives of the working-class better against those fighting tooth and nail to stop us?

- And Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman highlight the role a progressive high-end income tax could play in limiting extreme inequality.

- Meanwhile, Hugh Son and Brian Schwartz point out the inevitable counterattack from the wealthiest few against any meaningful move toward equality. And Anand Giridharadas warns that tech-sector magnates in particular are trying to give the impression of addressing social needs while locking in their wealth and power.

- Trish Garner discusses the progress British Columbia has made in addressing poverty, along with the long road left to travel before the scourge of social deprivation is eliminated. And Laurie Monsbraaten reports on some of the shattered expectations and individual precarity resulting from Doug Ford's cancellation of even a tiny basic income pilot project in Ontario.

- Finally, Alastair Spriggs reports on the World Economic Forum's recognition that even the economic fallout from climate change demands a concerted transition strategy. And David Suzuki writes that Canadian public perceptions have been thoroughly manipulated by a combination of corporate and public fossil fuel propaganda.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Nutty cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Larry Elliott reports on Oxfam's latest study on wealth inequality, showing that 26 extremely rich people now own as much as half of the world's population. And Ronald Quaroni notes that half of Saskatchewan families are on the brink of insolvency - the highest level of any province in an already-bleak national survey.

- Given that inequality and individual insecurity, it should be little surprise that trust in government and social institutions is eroding (as Louis Putterman points out). And Matt Taibbi highlights how the U.S.' political establishment fails to understand the public's understandable frustration:

I have no idea if Ocasio-Cortez will or will not end up being a great politician. But it’s abundantly clear that her mere presence is unmasking many, if not most, of the worst and most tired Shibboleths of the capital.

Moreover, she’s laying bare the long-concealed fact that many of their core policies are wildly unpopular, and would be overturned in a heartbeat if we could somehow put them all to direct national referendum.

Take the tax proposal offered by Ocasio-Cortez, which would ding the top bracket for 70 percent taxes on all income above $10 million.

The idea inspired howls of outrage, with wrongest-human-in-history Alan Greenspan peeking out of his crypt to call it a “terrible idea,” Wisconsin’s ex-somebody Walker saying a 5^th grader would know it was “unfair,” and human anti-weathervane Harry Reid saying “you have to be careful” because voters don’t want “radical change quickly.”

Except polls show the exact opposite. Almost everyone wants to soak the rich. A joint survey by The Hill and Harris X showed 71 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Independents, and even 45 percent of Republicans endorse the Ocasio-Cortez plan.

Is it feasible? It turns out it might very well be, as even Paul Krugman, who admits AOC’s rise makes him “uneasy,” said in a recent column. He noted the head of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated the top rate should be even higher, perhaps even 80 percent.

We’ve been living for decades in a universe where the basic tenets of supply-side economics — that there’s a massive and obvious benefit for all in dumping piles of money in the hands of very rich people — have gone more or less unquestioned.

Now we see: once a popular, media-savvy politician who doesn’t owe rich donors starts asking such questions, the Potemkin justifications for these policies can tumble quickly.

- Andrea Janus reports on the widespread food waste in Canada - particularly within the food industry rather than at the consumer level. And Daniel Tencer examines how Canada's housing market has become thoroughly unaffordable for far too many.

- Finally, any Saskatchewan readers are encouraged to participate in what little public consultation the Moe government is offering when it comes to the province's library system - and particularly to point out that libraries do far more than merely lending materials.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Eric Levitz exposes the unsoundness of the right-wing excuses for allowing the accumulation of obscene wealth. And Toby Sanger weighs on the effect of increased tax rates on extremely wealthy individuals - along with the other policies which need to accompany more progressive taxation:

(T)here isn’t much evidence that raising top income tax rates actually leads to a large out-migrations. Significant differences in income tax rates in the New York City region haven’t led to many people moving to take advantage of lower tax rates, except for those in retirement age. Other lifestyle factors, including the quality of life and public services, tend to be much more important for people, especially for those with higher incomes.

There’s also little convincing evidence that those with top incomes significantly reduce their work efforts in response to higher income tax rates to the degree that it would result in lower revenues.  Instead, most economists agree that by far the largest behavioral response to higher top income tax rates involves tax avoidance (and evasion) by income shifting. When there’s income shifting for tax purposes, the income often shows up in other places, although taxed at a lower rate.

For those with the money and means, this can be achieved in many ways, some legal and others illegal, including by taking advantage by the lower rates of tax for private corporations, lower rates of tax on stock options, capital gains, and investments, use of private family trusts, tax evasion and taking advantage of tax havens.

Canada’s wealthy are already so proficient at using these loopholes and other means to reduce their taxes that the average reported income tax rate on the very top 0.01% is actually lowerthan the income tax rate on the top 0.1%. If we included the offshore and other unreported income of the wealthiest, their tax rates would be even lower still.

What this all means is that there is considerable room to increase top income tax rates, but it must be combined with much more significant actions to eliminate tax loopholes and preferences that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, by more serious action to crack down on use tax havens and by more aggressive enforcement and penalties against wealthy tax evaders and those who profit from them.

- Francine Kopun reports on a proposal to alleviate Toronto's housing crisis by developing currently-unused properties. And CBC News discusses Daniel Dutton's observation that investment in social supports produces immense returns in the form of reduced health care costs.

- Meanwhile, Sarah Giles, Danyaal Raza and Rupinder Brar remind us why a privatized health care system produces worse outcomes for everybody except profiteers. 

- Mitchell Anderson warns against being distracted by populist theatre by governments working against their citizens in substance.

- Finally, George Monbiot writes that any genuine crisis of masculinity lies in the culture of fear and repression which has caused readily-avoidable harm to men and women alike.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Penney Kome writes about the importance of treating poverty as a social disease rather than a purely individual circumstance. And Jackie Esmonde and Todd Gordon discuss how Doug Ford is using the social effects of poverty to force workers to put up with whatever treatment employers see fit to inflict:

While the severity of poverty in Canada in 2018 is less than a century ago, today’s austerity agenda broadly follows a similar pattern: attaching poverty conditions to social assistance and promoting the general vulnerability of workers. These conditions are, of course, experienced in different ways by different people. Women who rely on social assistance, for example, face a punishing level of surveillance of their relationships and reproductive choices. Women, particularly racialized women, also face a level of discrimination in the labour market that makes them most likely be amongst the working poor.

Legal coercion is also a key component of the austerity agenda, notably in Ontario’s legal prohibitions on panhandling through legislation such as the Safe Streets Act and more aggressive law-and-order police practices.

However politicians may frame their actions towards social assistance as being in the best interests of the poor, it is clear their intention lies elsewhere. They are well-aware that social assistance rates are grossly inadequate, that welfare is punitive and degrading and that the consequences are terrible: homelessness, illness, reliance on shelters and food banks, and stagnation of wages for many workers. And as the inquests into the deaths of Kimberly Rogers and Grant Faulkner show, people die as a direct result of Ontario’s miserable social assistance programs.
...
Driving these political decisions is the desire to continue re-making labour markets by deepening and extending precarity in order to contain labour costs while boosting labour productivity – to set the conditions, in other words, for strengthened capitalist profitability on the backs of workers. With the unravelling of the relative economic stability of the post-World War Two period, a new urgency was felt by capital to reset labour relations, shift the balance of power in favour of employers, and drive down the expectations of workers and the unemployed. But, despite definite success with this agenda, economic volatility and intensified competition between corporations (from both domestic and international sources) are the new norm of the neoliberal period. So too, therefore, is the constant attack on workers.
...
Forced into the labour market, former benefits recipients are likely to end up at its bottom end, where work is the most unsafe, precarious, and low paying. While the expansion of the labour market with more extremely desperate workers may not immediately affect the conditions of workers with better wages and working conditions, especially if they have the benefit of a union, this nevertheless marks another move by governments in their ongoing and longer-term project of re-engineering working-class expectations for good jobs and a decent life. But expanding the layer of extremely desperate and vulnerable workers could over time also translate into a further softening of working conditions for other workers, as bad jobs continue to become the norm, more companies turn to this expanding pool of workers to stay competitive, and workers with better working conditions are willing to make concessions in order to avoid the growing bottom end of the labour market.

- Alison Pennington comments on the connection between stagnant wages and the decreased effectiveness of sectoral bargaining in Australia. And Leo Gerard highlights the indignity of forcing people to work without pay - as the Trump administration is doing to hundreds of thousands of federal workers during the course of its shutdown.

- Stephen Gandel writes that the Trump tax scheme which was already recognized as a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has proven even more regressive and costly than advertised. Mark Engler and Andrew Elrod point out the need for a tax system which prevents (rather than encouraging) the undue accumulation of wealth. And John Rapley offers a reminder as to why we can't count on the charity of the obscenely rich to meet social needs.

- The Australia Institute studies how consumers have paid the price for the ideological privatization of their electricity sector.

- Finally, Ethan Lou discusses the environmental impacts of Bitcoin as a classic conflict between artificial value and real-world harms to the public.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Linda McQuaig writes that Canada's federal government should look at buying the soon-to-be-vacated GM plant in Oshawa to begin production of electric vehicles. But Nav Persaud notes that even when the Trudeau Libs make promises about using government power and resources for the public good, they ultimately end up going along with the wishes of the corporate sector.

- E. Tammy Kim writes that instead of relying on corporations to address housing shortages, cities should ensure the actors who cause and profit from rising rents are taxed to cover the cost.

- Ivana Kottasova reports on a new study showing how the global environment can't handle the damage caused by the U.S.' increase in fossil fuel production and consumption. And Fatima Syed reports on Doug Ford's extension of anti-government dogma to the treatment of endangered species in Ontario.

- Meanwhile, Erika Shaker examines the predictable effects of Ford's plan to undermine student newspapers and organizations as part of a more general attack on post-secondary education, while Nora Loreto points out that it particularly stands to weaken students' voices in the general public. And Martin Regg Cohn views the false promise of tuition cuts as following in the PCs' buck-a-beer tradition of counterproductive, faux-populist policies.

- Claire Clancy reports on recent findings of Alberta's Elections Commissioner concluding that Rebel Media and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have broken election laws. And Elizabeth Thompson reports that a single guilty plea and small fine looks like it may close the door on any public knowledge of SNC Lavalin's system of illegal federal political donations to the Libs and Cons.

- Finally, Trish Hennessy discusses some trends to watch for - and positive change to pursue - in the year ahead.

Musical interlude

Metric - The Shade