Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- In The Public Interest studies how the privatization of services leads to increased inequality:

In the Public Interest’s analysis of recent government contracting identifies five ways in which government privatization disproportionately hurts poor individuals and families...

1. Creation of new user fees: The creation of new user fees to fund public services disproportionately impacts the poor. As government budgets have declined, some jurisdictions have tried outsourcing services to private companies and allowing those companies to charge fees to the end-user to subsidize or completely fund the service. Many of the services that use this contracting and payment structure are those that poor individuals and families must use or are subject to through their interactions with the government.
2. Increase in existing user fees: Residents of jurisdictions that have privatized critical public services such as water or transit have experienced steep increases in their rates—such increases particularly harm low-income residents and those on fixed-incomes.
3. Privatization of the social safety net: Programs that provide and deliver critical support to the poor are often the subject of privatization experiments, many times with tragic results. Because these programs assist those who have little to no political power, these programs are low hanging fruit for privatization.
4. Decreased wages and benefits: Privatization increases income inequality through the decline of contracted workers’ wages and benefits. When governments directly provide a service, they often provide living wages and decent benefits to workers. When private companies take control, they often slash wages and benefits in an attempt to cut labor costs, replacing stable, middle class jobs with poverty-level jobs.
5. Increased socioeconomic and racial segregation: The introduction of private interests into public goods and services can radically impact access for certain groups. In some cases, as the public park example in Section 5 shows, privatization can create parallel systems in which one system propped up by private interests typically serves higher-income people, while another lesser quality system serves lower-income people. In other cases, the creation of a private system, such as charter schools in a school district, siphons funding away from the public system meant to serve everyone. In some situations, poor individuals and families can lose access to the public good completely.

- Meanwhile, Robert Benzie and David Rider note that Kathleen Wynne seems happy to give away public money to subsidize the privatization of Ontario Hydro in the name of managing public money.

- CBC reports on the Saskatchewan Party's decision to undermine the operations of Saskatoon's Lighthouse shelter - with no regard either for the people who rely on it, or the social costs of addressing their needs through other avenues such as police or health care resources. And PressProgress points out the revenue problems facing cities in providing the services citizens need.

- Sean Kavanagh reports on the difficulties facing Manitoba's low-income workers due to the lack of any adjustment to the province's minimum wage. And Paul Karp discusses the difficulties in trying to enforce basic health, safety and employment standards in the gig economy.

- Rafael Correa highlights the need for the international community to work together in ending the abuse of tax havens.

- Finally, Brian Kahn writes that our atmosphere appears to have passed the 400 parts per million carbon dioxide threshold permanently - marking just one more example of the irreversible damage we've already done to our environment. And Kevin O'Connor offers a reminder that Saskatchewan is the worst offender going when it comes to carbon pollution, while Joe Romm points out the plummeting prices that are making renewable energy into the clear choice for the future.

Musical interlude

Massive Attack - Safe From Harm (Rebuilt)

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Lawrence Summers discusses the economic damage being done by a top-heavy income spectrum - as the effect of major stimulus programs may have been wholly outweighed by the decline in middle-class incomes.

- Meanwhile, Canadians for Tax Fairness points out the impending tax court case which will bring Cameco's offshoring of profits under scrutiny.

- Zhaocheng Zeng and Benson Honig discuss the positive effects of a living wage for employers and employees alike. And Arindrajit Dube points out the connections between improved minimum wage levels, general wage increases and a reduction in poverty in the U.S.

- Peter Zimonjoc discusses the Pembina Institute's latest report charting a path toward a clean energy economy and a serious reduction in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.

- Meanwhile, if we needed a reminder as to why it's essential to make the transition away from dirty fossil fuels, David Shield reports that tests are showing continued contamination in the North Saskatchewan River from Husky's oil spill. And Chris Mooney examines how the Arctic region is being transformed beyond recognition.

- Finally, the Star rightly demands that the Trudeau Libs work with the NDP in repealing Bill C-51, rather than siding with an unnecessary and unaccountable security state against the public. And Jim Bronskill reports that CSIS was already using bulk datasets with no consideration for personal privacy - while also keeping its own responsible minister in the dark about overseas operations.

New column day

Here, on how a recent spate of announcements signals that contrary to their campaign commitments in both theme and detail, there's been little difference between the Trudeau Liberals and the Harper Conservatives in substance.

For further reading...
- The point is one being made by plenty of other observers as well in various contexts, including Ross Belot, Karen Mahon, Terry Milewski, Jeremy Nuttall, Lawrence Martin and Tom Parkin.
- By way of a reminder, the Libs' election platform is here (PDF), and my review of it is here.
- For more on the individual stories, Laura Payton reports on the Libs' decision that Stephen Harper's emission targets are good enough for them, as well as on Jane Philpott's announcement that the Cons' health funding levels won't be revisited. And on the former point, Derrick O'Keefe laments the Libs' liquid natural gas "carbon bomb", while on the latter the Council of Canadians calls out the lack of action toward a national prescription drug plan.
- Andrew Kuraja reports on the Site C permit approval, while Jorge Barrera contrasts that position against Jody Wilson-Raybould's supposedly committed activism against the very same project.
- Kristy Kirkup reports on the Libs' delay in complying with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's orders on services for on-reserve children.
- And finally, Alison Crawford reports on Wayne Smith's decision to resign as Statistics Canada's Chief Statistician due to political meddling in its operations.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Valerie Strauss discusses the disastrous effects of corporatized education in the U.S. And Alex Hemingway examines how B.C.'s government (like Saskatchewan's) is going out of its way to make it impossible for a public education system to do its job of offering a bright future to all students.

- CJEM reports on a new survey showing just how many Saskatchewan residents are on the edge of a financial cliff if not already on the descent - with more than a third of those surveyed already unable to pay their bills, and over 60% having at best minimal ability to absorb any additional expenses.

- Colin Freeze and Jim Bronskill report on Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien's annual report - with Freeze focusing on his call for legislation governing metadata, and Bronskill on the total lack of regard for Canadians' privacy in the analysis and application of Bill C-51.

- David Bush critiques the Canada Post Task Force's study which looks to set the stage for worse service at higher prices, rather than seriously evaluating options such as postal banking which could reverse both of those outcomes.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne suggests that the Senate's authority to disrupt public business should match its non-existent legitimacy. And Carlito Pablo reports on Maxwell Cameron's view that we should expect decisions to be made by representatives elected through a fair and proportional system.

Into the dark

Apparently provincial finances have joined monthly job reports as areas where if there's nothing to be spun in the Saskatchewan Party's favour, Brad Wall is making a concerted effort to hide what's going on from the public. (Go on, just try to find the government's monthly jobs release containing this news - in contrast even to this.)

But what's worse is that if the Sask Party really thinks it can get away with government-by-putting-fingers-in-ears-shouting-la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you, there figure to be plenty more bad-news areas going unreported.

[Edit: fixed links.]

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mariana Mazzucato makes the case for a progressive message of shared wealth creation:

A progressive economic agenda must have at its heart an understanding of wealth creation as a collective process. Yes, businesses are wealth creators, but they do not create wealth alone. Workers, public institutions and civil organisations are also wealth creators. Their collective actions can increase the investments required to drive long-run growth and productivity. But this will happen only if the private and public sectors find a way to share the risks and rewards of the 21st century.

This demands moving away from the idea that the public sector merely facilitates the private sector, or picks up the downside in an economy where the risks are borne by a “flexible” workforce and the rewards hoarded by corporate giants. Instead, we must consider how responsibilities can be shared for the bold investments that are needed. The current situation has led to an overly financialised private sector – with company profits being spent not on reinvestment, but on gimmicks to bolster stock options such as share buybacks – and to a public sector that is told to create the conditions for growth and let the private sector do the steering and profit-making.

Some separate economic from societal problems, stating that we must address the former before we can tackle the latter. But the future for progressives lies in advancing the two together. It is through applying our minds to societal and environmental issues that we can lay the foundations for future prosperity. The means is “mission-oriented” policy, where an objective – such as landing a human being on the moon or decarbonising the economy – can offer a fresh direction for the entire economy. Meeting challenges such as climate change by steering the economy in a green direction requires more than a “nudging” mentality. “Nudging” assumes business already wants to invest in new areas and merely requires incentivising through reductions in tax or regulations. But the animal spirits of business must be created, not assumed. This requires a more active market-shaping and market-creating framework that sparks business excitement about new investment.

- George Monbiot is the latest to point out that if we have any hope of meeting the global climate targets set in Paris, we need transition away from extracting fossil fuels immediately. But Derrick O'Keefe reports that the future of our planet hasn't been considered important enough for the Trudeau Libs to hold off on approving a liquid natural gas climate bomb.

- Aditya Chakrabortty writes that the systematic degradation of working conditions and employee rights goes far beyond the sectors where they're most visible.

- Michelle Zilio notes that the recent fabricated controversy over Maryaf Monsef's country of birth serves mostly to highlight how capricious Canada's citizenship laws are. And Ian MacLeod highlights the federal Privacy Commissioner's latest annual report which finds an almost total lack of interest in protecting Canadians' personal information.

- Finally, Catherine Hall discusses how the shameful legacy of slavery is still echoing in the right's efforts to dehumanize minorities around the globe.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats on the go.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- John Quiggin argues that public services and corporate control don't mix - no matter how desperately the people seeking to exploit public money try to pretend otherwise:

Market-oriented reforms, particularly in the provision of human services like health, education and public safety, have begun with a working system and replaced it with a string of failed experiments.

Here are a few examples from recent news stories around the English-speaking world:

• The emergency closure of 17 Scottish schools due to safety concerns. These schools were built under the Private Finance Initiative, begun under Thatcher but greatly expanded by Blair and Gordon Brown.
• Crippling costs incurred by hospitals throughout the UK, again as a result of PFI, threatening insolvency for many hospital trusts.
• Private prisons operator Serco forced to repay bonuses in New Zealand.
• For-profit educator ITT closed down without notice, right at the beginning of a new semester, after being cut off from Pell grant funding due to allegations of misleading students. This is one of many such collapses.
• Following a damning report, the US Department of Justice announced it will no longer use private prisons.
• Charter schools (some openly for-profit, many others run as businesses) have been failing at a starting rate.
• The disastrous shift to for-profit vocational education in training, most notably in Victoria and more recently in NSW, where the number of students has halved in three years. The cost to the budget from unrepayable loans for bogus courses has been estimated at $1.2bn for 2015 alone.

...
Sooner or later the advocates of reform will have to answer the Edison-Blair question: “What works?” And what works is traditional public provision. Through all of these failed experiments, the public sector, much-maligned and chronically underfunded, has carried on with the hard work of educating young people, treating the sick and providing the vast range of services needed in a modern society, on a the basis of an ethic of service to the entire community, and not merely those who can pay for premium service.

- Similarly, Andre Picard discusses the importance of a stewardship model for medicine, rather than allowing health needs to be governed solely by profit motives. And Martin Regg Cohn points out how the social guarantees provided by the Canada Pension Plan are only increasing in importance as workplace pensions become less secure.

- Robin Sears notes that progressives need to acknowledge the importance of effective public management, rather than waving away legitimate criticisms of government spending. But I'll argue that at the very least, right-wing anti-government spin should also be met with some of the many examples of the even worse consequences of leaving key issues in private hands - whether through privatized programs, or through complete abandonment to the corporate sector.

- Jason Warick reports on Winona Wheeler's message that all Canadians need to take responsible for reconciliation with First Nations. Ashifa Kassam writes about Grand Chief Stewart Phillip's lack of interest in empty gestures. And David Akin reports that the Libs' first wave of housing announcements falls well short of meeting even the most immediate needs.

- Finally, Branko Milanovic theorizes that inequality tends to be cyclical based on past changes in the relative wealth associated with rent as opposed to labour. But while he offers some useful theories as to how inequality might be reduced in the future, there's plenty of need for public action to bring them about (particularly a political turn toward more progressive systems of taxes and benefits).

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Owen Jones offers his take on how the UK's Labour Party should proceed following Jeremy Corbyn's most recent leadership victory - and while the exact circumstances may not apply to the NDP's upcoming leadership campaigns, his ideas as to how to combine the interests of base supporters and softer voters are well worth keeping in mind. And Jeremy Nuttall discusses Niki Ashton's continuing efforts to advance one of Jones' ideas by giving millenial workers a voice in an economy currently designed to exploit them.

- Yves Smith highlights the gross falsehood of corporate spin trying to push for even lesser business contributions to the society that makes profits possible.

- Tim Richter and Ryan Meili rightly argue that Canada's housing crisis should be seen as a public health emergency. And the Times Colonist highlights the importance of better addressing homelessness and housing issues in Victoria in particular.

- Duncan Pike points out why anybody concerned about an intrusive surveillance state should take the time to weigh in on the federal government's security consultations. And Brendan O'Connor reports on the equally-worrisome and rapidly-growing use of private surveillance the U.S. (largely supported by public funding).

- Finally, Murray Mandryk offers a handy example of "make it awkward" in action by calling out Brad Trost's regressive Conservative leadership campaign.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Tim Harford discusses how insurance and other industries are built on exploiting people who are risk-averse due to the inability to absorb substantial costs as "money pumps" for those who have more than they need:

(L)et’s step back and ask ourselves what insurance is for. Classical economics has an answer: people are risk-averse, which means that they will pay good money to reduce the variability of outcomes they face. If home insurance guards against the loss of a million pounds when my house burns down, I’m happy to buy the insurance even though the insurance company expects to make a profit from it.

But this risk aversion emerges from the fact that money is worth more to poor people than to rich people. Gaining a million pounds would make me rich but losing a million pounds would make me poor. I should not gamble a million pounds on the toss of a coin, because the million pounds I might lose is more precious to me than the million pounds I might gain.

As so often with classical economics, this is an excellent description of how we should behave. It is not such an excellent description of how we actually do behave. Risk aversion can only explain why we insure large risks. It cannot explain why we insure small ones. 

...

A money pump is a person whose irrationalities can be systematically exploited for financial gain. The simplest money pump is a person who prefers an apple to a doughnut, prefers a doughnut to a chocolate bar, and prefers a chocolate bar to an apple. Just offer them an apple in exchange for their doughnut plus a penny. They will accept. Then offer them a chocolate bar for their apple plus a penny. Then offer them a doughnut for their chocolate bar plus a penny. They end up with their original doughnut and are three pence poorer. Repeat for ever.

Money-pump arguments are sometimes deployed to object that people cannot be irrational, otherwise they would be bankrupted by money pumping. But economists are increasingly coming to realise that, instead, we should be looking for money pumping in action.

Given our anxiety about small risks, what would the money pumping look like? It would be an insurance policy focused on the narrowest possible slice of risk. It would be sold alongside another product or service, often at the last moment. It would be marketed by creating anxiety and then offering the product to make the anxiety go away. In short, it would look like the collision damage waiver, the extended warranty, and PPI. These bespoke slices of insurance are among the largest money-pumping projects in the modern economy. No wonder the banks abandoned their principles to join in.

- Jared Bernstein and Lori Wallach highlight (PDF) the need for an international trade regime which serves the public interest, not only the greed of the people who already have the most. And Yves Smith theorizes that the public backlash against corporate-centered trade deals may lead both to changes in how international trade is managed, and the identity of the countries at the forefront of developing the standards to be pursued.

- Needless to say, the Libs' devotion to the current trade model figures to exclude Canada from that group for the foreseeable future. And the Alberta Federation of Labour laments the Libs' determination to exploit foreign labour at the expense of both easily-abused temporary workers, and the Canadians who would otherwise fill the positions.

- Derek Thompson makes the case for a long-overdue round of trust-busting to reduce corporate power over innovation and economic development.

- Finally, Ed Finn writes that our health system should focus far more on maintaining wellness rather than responding only once an illness develops.